White
by Serena Bancroft
Summary: The origins of the Black Widow or the previous life of Natasha Romanoff in vignettes. A journey of loss and love and the intangible quality that makes us human. "No matter what happens, one of them will be right, and one of them will be wrong. There will be no middle ground." Rating for violence and adult themes.
1. Indoctrinate

**Title:** White**  
****Author:** Serena

**Summary: **The life of Natasha Romanova in vignettes.

**Ship: **Black Widow/Hawkeye

**Timeline: **Set in the movie-verse, not many (if any) mentions of the comic-verse.

**AN1:** I love the character of Natasha, and I absolutely adore the BlackHawk pairing :) Anyway, my first Avengers fic.

**AN2: **I will try my best to do Natasha justice. Sometimes in fics people flatten out her character a lot, or over-simplify her personality. I personally believe that she is an incredibly complex person, who deals with incredibly complex issues. I will try my best to show that.

**AN3:** Natasha is about 8 in this chapter; the beginning segment she's around 3 or 4. All chapters will be chronological.

A voluptuous woman who looked like her, minus the flaming red mane, and a taciturn man who wore thick, round glasses. A fire. She didn't know how it started, or even what it meant at her tender age. She remembers the dancing red and orange, someone holding her from running towards the flames, one long scream of terror and pain, and then silence.

. . . . . . .

"But I don't want to study."

"But, Natalya, you must."

She screws up her nose and turns her head away. "No."

The tutor places a gentle hand on Natalya's shoulder. "You know how important this is to your country."

"No, it isn't," Natalya says, shrugging away the man's hand.

"It's not? Then why does your government want you to learn it?" Natalya pauses. This was a trap, and she feels so stupid for walking right into it. She clenches her fists together over the textbook. "The government knows best what you need. Do you believe this, Natalya?"

The red-haired Russian girl gritted her teeth. "Yes."

The tutor smiles indulgently. "Good. Then-"

"But why this? Science and history and geography is pointless... Why can't I just do my target practice? I like guns."

The tutor sighed. He seemed to be going in circles with this girl in this argument. "Of course you do, Natalya. You have an exceptional aptitude for marksmanship, and our leader greatly approves." Natalya allows herself a prideful smile. "But in order to use those skills, you need a target. And to accomplish your future missions, you have to know all about your target- where they come from, what they know, what they do. This knowledge will help ensure your safety as well."

Natalya looked up at the tutor, away from the infernal Soviet history book. "But I thought my safety was of no concern."

The tutor nods, seemingly pleased with her answer. "You raise a good point, Natalya. We would all gladly give our lives for our government, for our Soviet Union. But I'm sure you can see the benefits of completing a mission while staying alive."

Natalya frowns and folds her arms over her chest. She looks back down at the textbook, angry at being proven wrong. "I suppose so."

Her frown gradually becomes a neutral line, and her tutor leaned closer. "We would never want you to fail your country. Do you want to disappoint us?"

She whispers, "No, it's not that..."

"I know, Natalya. There are a great many things that we do that no one finds enjoyable, or would ever do by choice." The tutor chuckles, always kind and firm, "Teaching history is not my favorite way to spend my time."

Natalya looks at him questioningly, but doesn't say anything.

"But I do it because I know how important it is. And in time, Natalya, you'll learn to appreciate the necessity. Our government knows what is best for us, what the world needs. It's a great burden, borne for our sakes. We must do anything we can to help. We must never disappoint our country."

Natalya was quiet, but mouthed 'no', flipping through the pages of the textbook, the _snit-snit-snit_ of the falling pages the only sound.

**Most vignettes will be a bit longer, but if you want to see something particular, say so in a review. Please feel free to leave some critique. This is my first attempt at something outright drabble-y.  
**


	2. The Petty Wrongs

**AN1:** Thank you for all the alerts and favorites! A review would be nice, since I'm kind of operating in foreign turf here. I know I'm not the best drabble-esque author ever, and it'd be great to have some feedback.**  
**

**AN2:** Something I forgot last chapter- I do not own or am at all affiliated with the Avengers, Marvel, etc.

**AN3:** Natasha is about 10 or 11 here.

"This is very disappointing, Natalya."

Natalya squeezes her eyes shut. _Do not cry._ She reopens them with a slow breath. Her face is hot. She keeps her eyes on the ground.

Her tutor crosses his arms over his chest. "We are very surprised. We all thought you would do better." He looks at the young girl, still sitting with her head bowed. "Eye contact, Natalya," he snaps sharply. She immediately looks up, all too familiar with what would happen to her if she did not obey... "You will not be allowed to attend weapons or combat training today or tomorrow. You will spend all your time restudying for this exam."

Natalya nods, blinking away the small tears that had begun to gather. "It's is very important to the government, and to this program that you succeed. Do you understand, Natalya?" She messed up because she didn't study enough. She knew that.

She nods again, and let out a shaky breath as her control starts to slip away. A tear squeezes out of her eye, trickling to her chin.

The tutor smiles sadly at her, in the condescending way one would smile at a naive child- and Natalya hates it. She hates being treated like a child. "We know it makes you sad. You are disappointed in yourself. It is natural, child. We are sad, too. We thought you were smart."

Natalya feels something white hot rush up her spine. "I am smart!" she yells, standing up out of her chair in vehemence. Her right hand, her shooting hand, fists so tightly her arm began to shake. She feels the heat of her anger creeping through her extremities, that ache to strike out. She decides she couldn't wait for combat training today. _But they took it away..._ her anger grows.

The tutor asks, "Do you even know which question you missed?"

She did. _1,4-Dioxin can be prepared by cycloaddition, namely by the Diels–Alder reaction of furan and maleic anhydride. The adduct formed has a carbon-carbon double bond, which is converted to an epoxide, colorless and highly flammable..._

"I'll just retake the test."_ I just didn't study enough._

The tutor smiles maddeningly, again, and Natalya feels her anger fizzling in her fists. "Of course you will. And failure a second time will be unacceptable. If you fail to improve, we may be forced to expel you from the program. We have no use for a below-average participant, Natalya."

She stares with such hurt, intense hatred beginning to cloud her vision. Her mouth is agape. _Expulsion._ They _couldn't_ do that. Where would she go if they... She loses the hurt look on her face as she studies the tutor through narrowed eyes. She looks him up and down, easily finding all the pressure points that could incapacitate, even kill...

The tutor does his best to not let his slight discomfort show. Uneasy, despite the fact that he is being eyed by a young child less than half his age. "Natalya, you cannot harm me. It would be unwise to think you can."

The innocent looking girl has a gleam of malice in her eyes. "Think you could stop me?" _The fragility of the human body is something to be exploited, Natalya. Brute strength will not help you without cunning._ Words from her combat trainer echo in her head, begging her to stalk forward and _do what she was trained to do._

"Is that a threat, child?"

It is his calling her 'child' that nearly makes her snap, but she remains utterly silent, as anger and hate wear away as she remembers the dozens of armed guards that line the halls of the facility. She wouldn't get two punches in before she was taken away... _but two punches may be all I need._ She begins to calculate exactly where to hit so that his head would recoil _just so_ and the momentum would snap his neck-

"I am disappointed in you, Natalya. Everyone will be very displeased to hear of this incident. It is never your place to question your superiors, and it is certainly not a place to make threats." There is a pause as Natalya considers his words, all thoughts of killing the tutor draining from her mind like the anger in her limbs. She can't keep disappointing them... they'd given her so much already. She can't keep failing... she hates being punished... "We will crush this stubborn streak out of you, child. The Soviet Union has no use of a strong-willed child who cannot follow orders. Do you understand?"

Fear replaces the hate. She tries to ignore it as she slowly sits back down. "I said I'll retake the test. I'll pass, and I'll get better, and we won't have to have this pointless conversation ever again." And she knows it _is_ pointless. She can take orders. She just doesn't want to take them from her tutor, who is probably _useless_ in a fight.

The tutor doesn't respond. Rather, he walks out of the room, leaving Natalya by herself (_but she knows it won't be for long_). With the room absolutely silent, it begins to dawn on Natalya that she won't be leaving this room physically unscathed... not that it hadn't happened to her before...

One of the guards, swathed in red, enters and withdraws a live cattle prod. She allows herself a moment of relief that it was not the bull whip today (_probably the worst of their torture devices_). The evidence of it's cruelty had littered her young body with several deep, long scars. Her instructors told her they would fade with time, which made her happy... she wouldn't want to remember her failures every time she looked in the mirror.

The Red Room guard stalked up to Natalya wordlessly. She felt the fear chase all other thoughts from her mind. "No, no, please don't-"


	3. Extradition and the Beast

**AN1:** Thanks for all the story traffic! I'm loving it! And I finally got some reviews! Yay!

**AN2:** Natasha is 10 or 11 in this chapter as well, same as last chapter.**  
**

"Let the weapon become an_ extension,_ Natalya, it's a part of you."

Natalya is finally in her niche. _God, she'd missed this. _Her suspension had originally been only two days, but her subsequent threatening of her tutor had extended that suspension to two weeks, the duration of which had been filled with vicious bouts of visits from the Red Room guards... She holds her gun in her right hand, her left hand steadying the long barrel like she'd learned. She could have easily squeezed off the 30-round magazine with decent accuracy (considering how young she was, it was an awesome feat), but her trainer halts her.

"No. Use your left hand."

Natalya grits her teeth as she switches hands. The deep, gouging burns left by the cattle prod were, for the most part, centered on her left side. Firing a gun would be extremely painful. Instead of complaining, she just breathes, hoping that it wouldn't cause her too much pain.

She squeezes the trigger once. The long barrel recoils, shoving into her shoulder and directly in one of the healing burns. _Her shoulder is on fire. _Despite her attempts at pain control, an agonized growl slipped through her teeth, and the barrel on the gun dips away from the target, and Natalya's eyes widen in panic. She cannot fail. Not again.

Making no further sound, she agonizingly brings the weapon back to the center eye of the target.

The weapons trainer is as indifferent, as parentally firm as the rest of them. "You must ignore the pain, Natalya. If you give into it, you have lost the battle before it has begun. It is necessary for you to learn how to fire with perfect accuracy while injured. And you already know the benefits of being ambidextrous."

Natalya is tougher with physical strain rather than mental. Easier to just grit her teeth and move on. "I understand," she manages, and finally empties the rest of the magazine, each shot sending tongues of flame licking through her arm and shoulder, even radiating through her side.

The trainer steps forward, "You must learn to fight the pain, Natalya."

"How?" She realizes how broken she must sound, and tries to bolster her pain tolerance (_one thing she'd learned she had a generous amount of after her stubbornness had landed her on the other side of a torture device a significant number of times..._).

The trainer sighs. Natalya tenses. _She can't think I'm weak. _"Think of the science of it, Natalya. What is pain?"

"The firing of certain cautionary nerves that deliver pain signals to the brain that would deter the action that causes pain," the girl responds automatically, quickly. Facts were easy.

"So essentially," the trainer says, handing another full clip of bullets to her trainee, "pain is all mental. And all mental problems can be thought out of."

Natalya takes the bullets, effortlessly loading the large gun. It is an interesting juxtaposition, a weapon designed to kill placed in the hands of a girl who was being made to kill. She doesn't say anything as she aims at the target once again.

_All mental problems can be thought out of._

_Pain is all mental._

_I am not in pain.__  
_

She doesn't get it right away, the burn still there as she fires one bullet. The fire burns her, and she tries to hide the wince, but she knows her trainer saw it. _I'm not strong enough. Why can't I be strong enough?_ "Natalya, you must focus."

"I am focused," she defends. She wants to empty the gun into the target. Most of her shots had been either on the center or very close to it (_a very good day_) so far, and she doesn't understand why they are still going. She wants to stop. Her shoulder throbs.

The trainer narrows her eyes. "If you were focused, you would feel no pain."

Natalya raises the weapon again, "But my shots are pretty much perfect," she voices her thoughts (_something she should know not to do by now_), "Why are we still doing this?"

Without warning, the trainer yanks the weapon from Natalya's hands. "Because the shooting is not your lesson today," she answers with calm, terrifying patience. "Learning to function with your pain is." And with that, the teacher grabs Natalya's left shoulder, already screaming from the recent trauma, and _digs_ her fingers in.

Natalya cannot help but scream. Her knees shake, but she doesn't fall.

She thought the blunt end of her gun recoiling against the wounds was painful, it was nothing compared to her trainers fingernails digging through the thin shirt she wore, digging into the burns left by the cattle prod.

"_Do not scream_," the trainer said, unaffected by the fact that she was, in essence, torturing the girl in front of her. "If you scream, the pain wins."

Natalya fists her hand, fingernails gouging into her palms so deeply she feels the warm wetness of blood against them. Her young face is twisted in pain, and she cannot help the traitorous whimpers of pain escaping her throat. _Why can't I be strong enough?_

"Are you weak, Natalya? Everyone speaks so highly of you. Will I have to tell them all what a failure you are when you can't tolerate a little pain?" She forces the girl down to her knees.

Those words strike her heart harder and more viciously than any form of torture the Red Room guards could cook up. "_No!_" Natalya screams, but this time not in pain, but in anger. "_I won't fail!_" She doesn't realize that she no longer feels the pain in her shoulder.

And then the trainer stops, withdrawing her hand. Without eye contact or helping the girl to her feet, the weapons trainer says, "You are dismissed, Natalya."


	4. In The Beginning

**AN1: **Thanks so much for the incredible story traffic! I hope I'm doing okay in showing Natasha's character. Let me know if you've any complaints, critique, or helpful hints... something.

**AN2: **Something that I completely did not acknowledge was the fall of the Soviet Union. I had intended to work that into the plotline, but it didn't work within my assumption of her age and my timeline. So, in this story, assume Natasha was 7 years old when the Soviet Union fell.

**AN3:** Natasha is almost 11 in this chapter.

She doesn't travel outside the facility that often. She is loaded into a van with tinted windows, and driven by the man she knew to be the Chief Interrogative Officer, to a prison facility. If she knows anything about Russian prisons, it is that they are not pleasant places to be.

He leads the girl through security, and she doesn't miss the fact that he has several weapons on him, the the guards merely nod as he passes by.

She follows silently, obediently, through dingy hallways, nothing like the crisp, sterile halls of the Red Room. It is not long before they stop in front of a cell, without the typical prison bars, but a door that looks to be made of wrought iron.

Inside, a younger man is tied to a chair. His face is so swollen and bloody, she can't even distinguish his features. She just stares. "Don't speak," the Chief commands Natalya. He turns to the bloody man. "State your crime."

The prisoner looks up through a matted fringe of hair. His green, bloodshot eyes wander from his interrogator, and Natalya fights back a grimace when his gaze locks on hers.

Her presence confused him, she can tell. It _would_ be rather strange to have a ten year old girl observe an interrogation. But the Chief said that he had a special lesson for her. _You will be the first of your kind, Natalya. We have high hopes for you. This is where your training truly begins._ She didn't quite know what he meant when he'd said it, but came anyway. She is _trying_ to be more cooperative and less curious, after all.

The prisoner continues to stare at Natalya, some form of desperation in his eyes. _Is he honestly looking for me to help him?_ She stares back blankly.

"We have all the evidence," the Chief says, sounding tired and bored, though his posture is absolutely, ramrod straight as always. "We have copies of the messages you sent. We know where those messages went. If you confess, if you cooperate, we will be lenient."

The prisoner does not respond, and Natalya finds herself wondering if he even has the capability to do so. His gaze is off Natalya now, and he has gone back to staring blankly at the floor. She wonders how coherent he really is.

"Final chance."

Again, no response.

The Chief speaks to her without looking away from the prisoner. "Spies and insurrectionists are our biggest threat, Natalya. Their one and only goal is to gather information on our fledgling government, seeking to destroy it. Their groups are loosely organized and often suffer from fighting within their own ranks, so thankfully, they do not have much of a foothold. As it is, they pose no real threat, but their existence cannot be tolerated. We always attempt to extract information from prisoners, Natalya. Information is everything. A handful of facts can be more dangerous than an army of tanks."

The Chief pauses emphatically, allowing her time to absorb the lesson. "However, we've done all we can with this one. He has outlived his usefulness."

He reaches down and draws his pistol from its holster, and holds it out to Natalya.

It is clear what he wants her to do. There could be no other meaning behind the gesture, so she takes the pistol and lets her arm fall back to her side. The weapon is light in her hand. (_A Tokarev TT-33 Semi-automatic pistol. 0.84 kilograms. .45 caliber rounds. 8 round detachable box magazine. Maximum effective range of 50 meters. Muzzle velocity of 420 meters per second._) The gun feels at home in her hand, but the task at hand is anything but ordinary._  
_

"Twice to the head, Natalya."

Natalya realizes that the prisoner finally speaks. In English, which is the one language she is having some trouble grasping, much to her linguistics instructor's chagrin... "You use a child to do your dirty work? This is what makes you so despicable." She is confused by his words, but does not allow it to show.

Her throat closes. Her stomach twists, and she begins to worry that she may begin to wretch in the middle of the interrogation room. Her hand tightens around the pistol. (_Taking a life is just like target practice, Natasha. Aim and fire._)_  
_

Just like target practice. She'd taken a thousand shots _just _like this.

She felt the urge to look at the Chief for reassurance - but that would be a sign of weakness. She cannot be weak.

She'd been given an order. _We have no use of a strong-willed child who cannot follow orders._

Hesitation. Something she'd been taught to never do. She hesitates _strongly _at the thought of taking a life.

The Chief waits, saying nothing, as if being patient with her. That stings her, grates on her. Natalya Romanova requires no one's patience.

Just like target practice, she raises her right arm, supported her wrist with her left hand, aims, and fires.

Once.

Twice.


	5. Slip, Fall

**AN1: **Thank you all so much for the favorites, alerts, and reviews. Keep it up!

**AN2:** I've been a bit sparse on the details of Natasha's physical training, so I'm going to try to detail that a bit more in this chapter. Pardon any inaccuracy, because I can honestly say that I have no idea how Natasha learned to kick so much ass. I've kind of rushed through Natasha's childhood a bit, but now that she's approaching her teenage years, her training is becoming more intensive. And I've tinkered with the fight scene for a while, and I'm just not great at writing hand-to-hand combat Natasha Romanoff-style.**  
**

**AN3: **This was one chapter I wasn't entirely satisfied with. Let me know how it reads.

**AN4:** Natasha is 12 in this chapter.**  
**

Natalya groans as her body hits the mat. Again.

Her combat instructor sighs, stepping back and letting Natalya get herself up. "Natalya, you are exceptionally strong, but that brute strength will do you no good in a fight against many opponents. It is inefficient and sloppy."

Natalya nods. She got carried away. She tries not to, but here she is, charging at her combat instructor like he was a green ensign who didn't know his ass from his elbow. "I know."

He seems to hold back a sneer. "Then why do you not finish, Natalya? You begin with the proper technique, but you wind up finishing like a bumbling brute."

Natalya remains silent. The instructor stares her down, before grabbing her arm, dragging her towards the hallway and out of the gym. Her shorter legs forces her to nearly jog to keep up with her trainer.

She doesn't recognize exactly where they are going, and she loses track of her turns (_which they'd been trying to teach her, blindfolded. Approximate speed, distance traveled, number of turns..._) and began to feel incredibly stupid. This should be easy.

Her trainer leads her up several flights of stairs, the halls becoming less sterile and more militaristic. He leads her to a window that looks down on a training room that resembles the one in the Red Room, except it is filled with a crowd of young men.

It suddenly occurs to her what this room is. One of the many military hand-to-hand combat rooms that she assumes reside in the large facility. Her instructors informed her long ago that the Red Room was only a small part of Russia's military, but it was far and away the most important.

She is about to ask him why he brought her here, but, before she could utter a single syllable, he says sternly, "Observe, Natalya. Don't talk."

She turns her attention back to the observation window. She finds herself holding back a snort of condescension as she watches them fight. Just a bunch of brash boys trying to prove who is the toughest. Their hand work is sloppy, and their feet clumsy.

"This type of observation," the trainer says, "is crucial in understanding the advantages and disadvantages inherent to different styles of hand-to-hand combat. What you see now," he says gesturing to the boys she'd just labeled sloppy and clumsy, "is how you currently fight. You start with elegance, and wind up like this."

Natalya is silent. She has always hated criticism.

"But we will continue to observe here and practice, until these maneuvers become instinct, Natalya. Until they are as natural and expected as the next breath you take."

They'd been watching for nearly an hour when some of the men notice her and her trainer coldly observing from the observation deck above them. She only returns their curious, confused looks with cold glares.

She can read their lips, what they are saying. _'What's that kid doing here?' 'I bet she's a lost little girl.'_ They all laugh at that.

Natalya sneers. She could probably kill more efficiently than they. The knowledge makes her feel strong.

The trainer must notice her grimace. For the first time (_ever_) she sees an emotion come across his face- a smirk. Feral. Bloodthirsty. "You wish to spar with them."

For once, she feels understood. A confident smile spreads across her face. "I could kill them if I wanted. Their arrogance should be punished."

"So you seek a lesson in humility."

She nods. Eagerly. Her trainer seems pleased. "Come."

He leads her through a door and down a flight of stairs before emerging, into the bright, white light that beams down on the fighting mats.

One of the superiors in the room (_she isn't sure if the normal military men had handlers like she did._) halts the exercises. "General Sorolov," one calls out in greeting.

She never realized her combat instructor has a name. None of her instructors have names.

They all stiffen in a salute before her trainer barks out, "At ease, men." There is a lull in the room before her trainer speaks again, "I need your best man on the mat." Stillness. "Now."

The other, older men, who all obviously fear/respect her trainer fly into action and pick out 'the best man'. He is, in a word, huge. All solidly packed muscle and intimidation. Dark features that Natalya could consider somewhat handsome.

It doesn't matter now. She is going to spar.

She tosses her flaming red hair over her shoulder, and ties it back with an elastic before stepping onto the mat.

The large man, a _boy,_ really, laughs. "You want me to fight her? Really?"

Her trainer, stone-faced, says, "Yes. I do."

He laughs harder. "I hope I don't break anything," he says to her trainer before turning to Natasha. She's sizing him up, and he's not worried. "Watch out, little girl."

Natalya snorts, anything but dignified. She remains silent, the thrill of the fight beginning to run over her skin like electrical pulses. Her opponent probably doesn't realize that he cannot inflict as much pain as she'd experienced in her training.

And she'd watched him. In the hour before they'd come down, she'd watched and learned, absorbing all the different fighting styles and automatically imagining herself in those positions and how she would counteract each strike. From what she could tell from her observation, he is a highly physical fighter, relying on his out-sizing his opponents in order to drag them to the ground and pin them. His favorite is forcing his opponents facedown on the ground, with an arm twisted behind their backs. She smirks because she knows he would never get that far with her.

"Maybe you should be taking your own advice, Cream Puff." Not her best quip, but considering the look in his eye, she'd struck home. Her instructors are trying to stop her from doing that. Taunting her opponents.

Without an official beginning to the spar, her opponent lunges at her with a growl, but she isn't fooled. She moves out of the way without a problem, using a booted foot to shove him further off balance. In the ass.

Needless to say, as he tumbles into the mat and the jeers from the other cadets echoing, he is thoroughly pissed off. Natalya admits that literally kicking his ass probably wasn't the best idea. He stands, and doesn't come charging at her in rage like she'd anticipated.

Instead, he walks towards her, and she hunches into her battle stance. The electricity crackles through her. A fist comes at her, blindingly fast, and it misses her by _that much_. She turns her back to his solar plexus, grabs his forearm in on hand and shoves her shoulder into his elbow. She hears the telltale _crack_ that tells her it's dislocated. She follows by driving her elbow into his ribs, and she hears the pained _huhh_ of his contracting diaphragm.

She stomps his foot viciously and spins away. He's holding his elbow, a pained look on his face. (_E__ven when your enemy appears to yield, you must be unyielding._) A smiles wets her lips, and she runs at him, and she catches the wide-eyed look on his face as she leaps, and wrapping her legs around his unprotected head, a move that's quickly becoming a signature for her. The electric charge flows.

She knows the entire squadron has fallen silent as she uses her momentum to propel herself forward over his shoulder. She feels his weight shift as he loses his balance as she _yanks_ with her legs, her shoulders knocking out his center of balance in his hips, and brings his immense height crashing to the mat. She swings around his side to leap off before he can crush her.

Her dismount isn't as smooth as she hoped, couldn't get her legs underneath her quickly enough, so she lands on her knees. No matter. She tucks herself and rolls quickly into a standing position.

He's still on the ground, and Natalya feels cocky. She goes over to him, shoves a knee into his ribs. "Had enough?" Natalya hisses, the adrenaline of battle humming through her veins. She wants more. To hell with whatever her trainer wanted. She wanted _blood. _Sparks thrill through her body.

She expects to hear her trainer calling her off, she expects more verbal jabs from the squadron, she expects herself to snap his neck, but none of those things happen.

Instead, her opponent turns the tables.

She wasn't paying attention. In her mind, the fight had already been won, despite the fact that it had taken barely two minutes. His eyes snap open in rage, and before she can react, before she can disable him, he rolls, using his good arm to slam her against the mats.

She is facedown on the mats, and she knows she's got to _get away_. She feels him beginning to twist her arm behind her back, and she desperately squirms.

She catches a glance of her trainer. There is a look of satisfaction on his face. _You seek a lesson in humility._ He hadn't been talking about her teaching the men a lesson. That much was clear. (_Your overconfidence is unbecoming of you, Natasha._)

His massive weight is pinning her down, and her right arm is behind her back, twisted so tightly and painfully she wants to growl. "Not so tough now, are you?"

Natalya doesn't want to admit that she screwed up. She can't lose to someone so... brutish. She _can't_ lose.

She throws her head back, feels it connect against his face. His grip loosens and that's all the invitation she needs. She rips her arm from his grasp, rolls out from beneath him.

He does not stand quickly enough. A big mistake.

She delivers a scathing kick to his right ear. (_Ruins sense of balance. Disorientation follows._) Her opponent moans, and tries to stand. She doesn't allow it, too caught up in the heat of the moment to care about the damage she's causing, as she stops on his cervical vertebrae. (_When snapped properly can cause instantaneous death. Certain pressure points cause subject to lose consciousness._) She does not stop. The electricity explodes. One after the other, she hammers away at his ribcage, slamming her boot into his side again and again.

She shoves him unto his back, and she scarcely notices that he's lost consciousness. She places her foot on his neck, pressing down. She is almost _hungry_ to hear him choke for air. She growls. She looks at her trainer, whose expression is unreadable, but she can tell he's not pleased. _You try to clip my wings and this is what you will get,_ she thinks. She wishes she could say them aloud. With scorn.

As the bloodlust begins to abate, the static energy retreats, and she realizes that the other officers have flooded the floor, and she has been yanked away from her opponent's (_victim's_) prone form. One of them shoves her at her trainer, who grabs her tightly, yanks her roughly to his side.

She wants to shrug out of his grasp. She doesn't need him leading her around like a child. She just knocked out a man close to twice his size. She could take him down easily.

At that moment, when the emergency medics swarm around the very injured body on the mats, Natalya realizes how very dangerous she is.

She smiles.


	6. Alone in the Sea

**AN1:** Keep up the traffic! So glad this story is being enjoyed!

**AN2:** Sorry for the semi-update rift. My internet's been spotty, and, surprise surprise, sports take up a big part of my time. Also, this chapter felt a wee bit flat to me, and I've tinkered with it, but nothing quite seems to help. Tell me if I'm right or wrong.

**AN3: **Natasha is 13 years old in this chapter.

She is blown away, but she doesn't show it. She probably doesn't even have the capacity to convey shock anymore.

There are others.

Others like her.

They've been in the Red Room as long as she has, according to her weapons instructor. Some longer than others.

The first time she sees the others in a large communal room that she has never seen before. The walls are bloody red. How fitting. There are long tables metal tables that resemble something out of a prison, and they are ringed with chairs. And nearly every chair is filled with a budding assassin.

The room brims with girls. They all look like they are her age and most of them look as blank as Natalya. There are a few that cannot disguise their surprise. Her weapons instructor leans down, seeing exactly what Natalya had seen, and says quietly, "Those are the weak ones, Natalya."

Natalya wonders why her trainer points this out to her. She hopes that means the rest of them are considering her to be 'strong'. She would've smirked pridefully, but she refrains, maintaining a blank look of compliance.

Her weapons trainer leads to to an unoccupied seat next to a blank faced, blue-eyed girl who looks equally as composed as Natalya. She sits down, and her trainer leaves her abruptly, but she doesn't quite notice. However, when Natasha examines her a bit closer, is she... sizing her up? That makes Natalya want to sneer.

She wonders if any of them have killed before.

No one is sure of what to do. They all sit next to peers, unsure of what having peers means. Or what the hell you do with them once you have them. Uncomfortable silence settles over the room, the only sounds scraping chairs across the floor and one or two coughs. The air itself feels heavily laden with tension. Natalya is not immune to the curiosity, but her training has taught her to adapt to changing situations, and adapt she would to the fact that there were others in the Red Room.

The Chief stands before the room of completely silent teenage girls. An interesting comparison to what truly happened outside the facility's guarded walls. His voice carries clearly and loudly through the room as he begins to speak, "You are not alone."

No reaction to his words. Natalya assumes that the other girls, just like herself, had learned the hard way when to pay attention to the Chief. In other words, shut up when he's near, or you'll be beaten within an inch of your life. It had been one lesson Natalya had been all too willing to comply with after her first infraction.

"The rest of these girls have received the same training as you have. From this day forward, you shall be training with like-minded young women, supplemented by individual training." He paused, allowing his strange words to sink in. "We encourage you all to practice your social skills and get to know your fellow comrades. We only have one simple rule: you must always use your Red Room codename around the others. Punishment for breaking this ordinance will likely be public, and will most certainly be painful and humiliating. Know this." He pauses only for a moment. "You will finish out your individual training for the rest of the day. Your trainers will inform you of your names. It is encouraged that you forget your given names, and that you should wholly embrace the name we are about to give you, as it is given by your country." With that statement, he stalks silently out of the room, seemingly unaware that the small speech that hadn't taken even three minutes had blown dozens of girls perceptions of existence so far out of the water they couldn't even find their way back. The emphatic way he'd spoken the bizarre words would likely confuse an outsider, but to the upcoming covert agents, it was potent. Powerful. Their loyalty to their country has been drilled so far into them, few could live without it.

Trainers Natalya had never seen before approached their trainees, most of them dragging them off chairs ungracefully and then heading towards the door.

Natalya stands before her trainer can get to her, not wanting to look so undignified. She notices the blue-eyed stranger next to her has done the same. The girl has a air of condescension about her, and Natalya can't bring herself to get irritated. She knows that she can take down anyone here and kill them, probably well within five seconds. Empowering knowledge.

As her trainer takes her towards the door, Natalya shoots Blue Eyes a look that clearly stated _When I get the chance, I'm coming for you._

Blue Eyes seems to understand, but looks undeterred. Natalya doesn't like that.

A few minutes later, it is almost as if Natalya can forget about the entire experience in the communal hall, as the halls are once more devoid of life save for her and her trainer. She realizes distantly that her trainer is taking her to her quarters, but her mind is preoccupied with the thought that there are others. Others like her. The egotistical part of her is raging because she is not one of a kind, but the biggest part of her is just entirely unsure of how to deal with... that. She's never seen a girl within her age range, let alone interacted with one. Natalya hates being out of her element.

They arrive at her quarters, which are as dank and unappealing as military barracks. A cot that suffices, and a trunk for her meager clothing. The only evidence of someone living there are open textbooks lying open on top of the bed (_Computer Programming I and II._ They're teaching her how to hack into some of the most secure systems in the world. It's tedious. _Organic Chemistry._ One word: poisons. At least it's interesting.)

Her trainer brusquely sits her down, speaking before Natasha even has a chance to open her mouth, "You must forget your given name. From this day forward, you are the Black Widow."

The Black Widow. She likes the sound of it. (_The Black Widow spider is renowned for the female spider's cannibalistic mating tendencies..._) Talk about girl power.

The inclemency of giving up her name hasn't quite hit her yet. She is all too happy to embrace the Widow. It sounds deadly, intimidating.

The trainer adopts a high-and-mighty pose, her feet set apart, arms cross over her chest. Her eyes stare down harshly at her student, one of the most gifted fighters at the facility, "What is your name?"

Out of habit, and with her mind still running happy circles over her new name, she automatically replies, "Nat-" Before she can finish, and before she even knows what hit her, she is on the floor, her face throbbing. She sees the gleam of her trainer's brass knuckles in her periphery. Her feels a cut below her eye that is beginning to seep blood.

Another test that she'd failed.

Natalya's, or rather, the Widow's anger simmers behind her eyes, the heat giving her such clarity and focus she can't help but enjoy the pure and unaltered rage that flows. The blood that flows from beneath her eye is like fuel that coats her skin. She feels powerful like this. She doesn't scramble to recover as she may have done in the past when she's been beaten. Instead, she rolls silently to her feet, a look of utter calm in her green eyes.

"Attachment to your name is unproductive." Her weapons trainer is looking her up and down. She seizes her student's arm, since she isn't one to be trusted, and leads her to the door. "Come, Widow. Your failure must be punished."

She knew this was coming. It is completely expected by now. The word _failure_ was synonymous with _torture_. She hates failure with all her being. Despises that it makes her fear.

They arrive in a concrete room that has a drain in the middle, and a pressure washer hanging on the wall. It is a room meant to be washed clean. No matter how much water the room is doused with, Natalya can't forget every single time she was tortured in this room. Every scream of agony that ripped through the silence, echoed off the solid, unforgiving walls.

Several times before, she thought she would die in this room. Under the heavy hand of one of her trainers, or one of the Red Room guards, with the eerie yellow glow of the incandescent bulb strung overhead.

She hates the room. Her fury at being subjected to it again grows. (_She knows her trainers would be furious if they knew how angry she was. They always preach no emotion. Without emotion, there is no conflict._) She does not let it show. Her features are schooled to being perfectly blank.

She knows the motions by now. Her trainer releases her, and her eyes remain on the ground, silently seething, as she removes her shirt and loose-fitting sports bra. She unlaces her boots, tosses them to the side. Then go her tightly-fitted workout pants and panties. She feels no shame at her nakedness, having no self-regard or dignity to compare it to. She slowly gets on her knees, her arms hanging limply by her sides.

The Red Room guard makes not a sound as he enters, but she knows he's there. She hears the whisper of the uncoiling bullwhip, the leather softly contacting the cement floor. The fear rolls through her, and she fears she's going to throw up (_it wouldn't be the first time_).

"State your name," her trainer says. Natalya didn't look up.

"Black Widow." She knows now. Another test.

The trainer paces in front of her. Natalya sees the shadow of her instructor's moving legs on the ground. "It would be beneficial for you to remember."

Natalya finally looks up at the moment she wishes that she hadn't. She sees the slight inclination of her trainer's head, and she hears the muted _whirr_ of the leather flying the air.

She closes her eyes, focusing on the sound rather than the pain. _SNAP. _The first lash is painless as she considers the science of it, the loudly audible snap it only the tip of the whip breaking the sound barrier.

_SNAP._ She considers how leather is made of the tanned hide of an animal, typically cows.

_SNAP._ She considers how leather can be synthesized, created for mostly ethical reasons.

_SNAP._ Her mind whirls a moment, her focus breaking and she feels the raw pain of her exposed nerve endings. A pained breath heaves out of her lungs.

_SNAP._ Her carefully built wall of focus and control is breaking.

She braces for the next lash, but it doesn't come. Her trainer speaks again, "What was your former name?"

She hesitates. She doesn't know what to say. Tell the truth, be lashed. Tell a lie, probably be lashed anyway. An impasse. "Natalya Romanova."

The trainer deflates. "Incorrect. You had no name before you became the Black Widow. Am I correct?"

The Widow grinds out, "Yes."

_SNAP._ The Black Widow. That's her name, and she tries to install that name into any memories or instances wherein someone called her 'Natalya'._  
_

_SNAP._ The name Natalya Romanova has only brought her pain. The Black Widow will be impervious. Invincible.

_SNAP._ Natalya Romanova fears. The Black Widow fears nothing at all.

_SNAP._ The Red Room guard lashes her front side now. Natalya would panic, but the Black Widow is calm in acceptance.

_SNAP. _"Now, what was your former name?"

The Widow looks up, and answers, "I don't know." It is not a lie, not quite, but it is not the truth. Not yet.

The trainer is pleased. She signals the Red Room guard to leave.

"You may escort yourself back to your room." Then the trainer leaves.

And there is the Black Widow, alone and bloody on the concrete floor. She marvels that the trainer is letting herself go back to her room. Alone. That's never happened before.

Her body feels weak. Her hands shake, and her body feels raw and exposed. She knows that she will be in agony soon. But not yet.

Natalya Romanova was a weak shell of a girl.

The Black Widow is strong.

The Widow stands, shakily, and gathers the clothes she discarded earlier.

It hurts to put them back on, but she does it anyway. There is blood on the floor.

The Widow turns to the door, leaving Natalya Romanova behind in the concrete room, with the blood and yellow light. The Black Widow has emerged, and she plans on leaving Natalya Romanova in that room forever.


	7. Gravitation

**AN1:** Thanks for all the support! I could use a few more reviews, but eh, I ain't picky. Sorry for the rift. I've been in Denver the past week, and didn't have access to reliable internet to post anything.

**AN2: **The comics say that the program Natasha was in was the 'Black Widow program' but I'm changing a few things for my own creative purposes since Clint and Natasha's story are pretty open for interpretation.

**AN3:** 'Blue Eyes' refers to the girl Natasha sat next to during the Chief's presentation last chapter.

**AN4:** Natasha is about 13 years and 4 months old in this chapter.

Red Wolf.

That is Blue Eyes name. She carries herself with an unnamed confidence that made almost everyone subtly flinch away.

Everyone except the Black Widow. Because she carries herself with an equal amount of confidence, perhaps with a touch more egotism. A potent combination that made most of her opponents incredibly wary when the time came to face her. But not the Wolf.

After their first sparring session, a rivalry had developed between the two. Their fighting styles were similar- they both favored cool cunning over brute strength to beat their opponents. However, the Wolf would achieve victory by delivering strategically placed blows that would slowly incapacitate the opponent while the Widow was known throughout the compound for her uniquely acrobatic-style combat that was quickly becoming the envy of the other students and the trainers alike.

The Widow notices that many of her peers have been attempting to replicate the style, but none of them could quite achieve what she could. Besides, she thinks with an arrogant smile, she's been training in her form of combat since before she could remember.

Today is no different. The red-haired assassin walks in to the gym, early as always, and finds her sparring partner from the assignment sheet posted next to the door.

_Black Widow-Lioness  
_

Disappointment that she would not be facing the Wolf that day tweaks for a moment. It's followed quickly by confidence sweeping through her. Pure exhilaration surges. The Lioness was a large girl- not in terms of body fat, which she probably had none of, but in sheer size. Even at their relatively young age, the girl with corn silk hair and violent mahogany eyes towered above the rest of the others at six feet tall. An she did not lack muscle. She seemed to be made of large, solid bones wrapped on tensile, massive bands of muscle. Easily one of the strongest girls Natasha had ever seen.

Her strength and size were her only redeeming qualities. She wasn't particularly fast or agile, and the Widow planned to exploit that. She'd only sparred with the Lioness once, but she'd been unable to keep pace with the Widow's prehensile skill.

She is the first one there every morning. Not even the Wolf can beat her. She is a naturally early riser, and without having to have an escort to her destination any more (_a privilege she will never, ever take for granted_), she is free to arrive at whatever time she so desired. And most of the time that meant 0530 hours when hand-to-hand began at 0630.

The trainers were slightly concerned at first, but her early arrival was soon taken as a good sign. It the early hours of dawn, the Widow would practice. Usually just simple boxing with punching bags that would sometimes leave her knuckles battered and bloody by the time practice officially began. She was tempted to tape them the first time it had happened. But nothing, _nothing_, could beat the look of complete and utter intimidation on the face of her opponent that day when the saw her strut onto the mats with bright red blood running down her hands and a feral look it her eye.

The observing trainers (_probably there to make sure no one killed anyone_) eventually saw the blood, raced over and taped it up for her. Their attitudes were in stark contrast to her own combat trainer who believed firmly in 'let it breath', or, her personal favorite, 'just rub some spit on it and you'll be fine.' What she'd once considered an annoyance (_is it really so difficult to just let her tape it a little?_) became something she considered a strength. A bold statement to her peers that pain and blood and violence did not scare her.

Today is not one of those days. The Widow calmly does her warm-up stretches like she always does, watching her reflection, clad in the skin-tight black suit the trainers had given to her not too long ago, bend and reach in the wall of mirrors. She soon begins to practice a few moves she'd picked up from fighting the others- the Wolf in particular. She wishes that she could do weapons training, but the trainers were sure to keep those in a safe somewhere. Never know what might happen in a facility full of assassins.

A practice dummy, its body a canvas of precision targets, is the subject of the Widow's calculated flurry of kicks and punches to those places on the body that would drop a 200-pound man in seconds. This style is an interesting way to fight, but she much prefers her own aerial fighting. Her blood flows, her heart races, her muscles bunch and release and the exhilaration is amazing in its simple pleasure.

She revels in the physical challenge.

As she jabs her heel into the dummy's ribcage, she hears a chuckle from at least 20 feet behind her. "Your lines are sloppy. You need to be sharper if you want to be effective." Natasha doesn't turn, only stares at the dummy. The Wolf likes to criticize.

"And yet, I've still beaten you more times than you've beaten me when we spar," Widow throws back, finally turning. The Wolf scowls. The Widow grins.

"I'm the only one who has beaten you. So," The Wolf says, "I'm adjusting to your peculiar fighting style."

"You'd like to think so."

The Wolf shakes her head. "Always with the pride, Widow. I find your lack of humility refreshing."

"When you've got nothing to be humiliated about, it's hard to act like you do, Wolf."

"I was under the impression they were attempting to teach you that."

The Widow would grin, but she doesn't want to give Wolf the satisfaction. The Wolf is the only one she considers a match for her. She was smaller than Widow, only by an inch or two. Her features are sharp, like a pixie, with hard, blue eyes. Her characteristic fighting was admirable.

Widow laughs, "You're a funny one."

"I aim to please," Wolf says, lips quirking into a reluctant smile. "Are we sparring today? They seem to like pitting us against one another."

"They're just sick of watching everyone I fight get their ass handed to them on a silver platter." Widow stops a beat, walking further from the Wolf. "I got put with Lioness today."

Wolf actually looks disappointed. She turns away, headed back towards the sparring assignments.

The Widow just watches.


	8. Why

**AN1:** All updates won't be this quick. Last chapter was hellish to write, and I wasn't extremely fond of it, so I ended up running with this idea that popped into my brain and it was almost finished before last chapter was. Anyhoo, thanks for the response to this story! I'm loving it.

**AN2:** This chapter builds off the idea of Natasha being trained as a dancer. And, a clarification, all the girls in the Red Room are still trained solo some times to supplement their group training.

**AN3:** I doubt all of Natasha's physical training will be this detailed, but I will attempt. And I'm not a dancer. I did it when I was about 6 and I was horrible. They had to put me in the back at the recitals. Alas, I have several friends who dance and I know how difficult it can be, so I hope I did it justice.

**AN4:** Natasha is not quite 14 in this chapter.

"En pointe, Widow."

The Black Widow would call ballet a ridiculous waste of her time. She didn't see the point to learning to dance, but she remains silent. She'd long learned to not question her superiors, or suffer the consequences.

The room is such that two people are insignificant in its space. Every wall is a mirror. Every step echoes. Every word a poignant sound. The dancer stands with arms folded. Impatience.

Ligaments, tendons, muscles, bones- they all hurt. All struggle. Pure exhaustion was no stranger to her. But this new aspect (_still utterly pointless in her estimation_) gave her new walls to hit. Pointlessly painful walls. She fights to keep her breath as she forces trembling legs to tense, pull, lift, lift, _lift_ -

Her ankles give way under the strain, and she hits the floor, bent over and shaking so hard her teeth chattered. Her legs feel so painful they're going numb. She tries to find the thrill she gets when she uses her body to its full potential, but it cowers behind the pain.

The dancer sighs. "On your feet, Widow."

_Can't_. The word sticks in the back of her throat, where it would most assuredly stay. Always stay. She bites her lip, tries to not scream as she lifts herself up. She stands on swollen feet. She can feel the blood beneath the goddamned pointe shoes, soaking her toes. She gives up trying to regulate her breathing - every attempt wound up a choked gasp, wet and suffocating, deflating in her chest like a punctured balloon. The sound echoes through the room. She can't remember how many hours this lesson has lasted. It feels like days. (_Leg work. Endless cycles of plies, jumps, arabesques. Girls your age aren't normally capable of pointe, Widow, but you have to be better. Remember, you are not alone in here. You have to be the best. Pain is secondary, Widow. En pointe._)

There is no concious thought. her mind is blank as slate, inoperable and silent, replaced with the need to rest. Everything screams at her to stop. Her sheer willpower the only thing keeping her upright.

The dancer has not moved. "En pointe."

The command marches through her, she hates it with everything she has. Every bleeding appendage, every swollen joint hates.

Her toes have gone completely numb and felt frozen with inexplicable cold. Her calves still burn in a constant cramp. She lifts her head - a magnificent feat - and meets her own eyes in the mirror. She sees the look of an exhausted animal, run ragged by a pursuing predator. She begins to rise on her toes, and she doesn't miss the blood that now stains the wood of the floor. The shaking begins again, she she is unable to hold the scream in her lungs. She muffles the sound, bites her tongue so hard she tastes a metallic saltiness. More blood. Her muscles feel like they're ripping themselves apart.

She wants to stop. _Needs_ it more than her next breath.

She tries to make the rest of her body take up as much of the stain as it can manage- she feels bile rise in her throat as she keeps lifting, tightening...

The moment she rises on her toes, she feels the brief relief of accomplishment, followed by the panic as her legs give way once again. She lands on her side, and maintains enough presence of mind to turn her face to the floor before she begins to heave.

The dancer says nothing while her student writhes on the floor. Once the Widow is gripped by stillness, a hushed command, "That's all for today. You are dismissed." The dancer's footsteps whisper away, and the Widow is left, covered in blood and bile on the floor. The humiliation and desperation that races through her as she realizes she cannot get up rips through her.

She tries, but her body refuses to move.

Fear. She can't afford it, but she feels its coldly burning grasp anyway.

She hears nothing but a quiet buzz in her ear. Gray and white flit on the edges of her vision. The only indication that another person has entered the room is the feeling of being lifted.

She can only stare up at the face of her rescuer.

Wolf. She carries the Widow without a problem, bring her back to her quarters. The feeling of vertigo overwhelms her, and she is barely holding back another round of heaving.

Not a single word is uttered as the Wolf places Widow on the cot, begins to unsheathe her feet from the now very red pointe shoes. The Widow winces inadvertently as her raw and bloody feet are exposed to the air. She is so utterly exhausted that she does not protest Wolf's tender care. Her gentle hands are more preferable to Widow's own rough paws as she feels cotton padding embrace her weeping feet. "Your feet don't look good, but it's nothing that won't heal in time."

Her lungs heave. Her feet sting. Her stomach twists.

"If you feel the need to throw up, there's a trash can right here." Wolf moves the bin to Widow's side. It's all she can do to to roll her face towards the receptical, doesn't hesitate to wretch into the can, her body convulsing painfully when nothing is expelled. Tears burn from the ducts, and her mind races. Absolute lack of control swells through her, and she hates it. Hates her body for turning against her.

She is unable to roll herself onto her back. She remains twisted over the side as Wolf finishes dressing her feet.

"Why?" Widow croaks. She dreads the answer. She can't fathom what the Wolf will want from her in return. She cannot owe her. In the short time she'd had peers, she'd learned that much. Especially violent, often psychopathic peers. She hopes Wolf is none of those things.

Wolf stands, walking towards the door. Widow doesn't need to elaborate her question. "For lack of a better phrase, I'm not heartless."

The Wolf leaves, and Widow can only stare after her. _I'm not heartless._ The words twist, bend like shadows in her mind. The slippery morality struggles to find purchase in her preconditioned mind that refuses to acknowledge societal moral constraint. She grasps frantically for understanding, the tendrils dance just out of her reach. Teasing and taunting. Widow doesn't understand why she can't.

The last threads of her consciousness fade, grappling over an ethical concept she cannot hope to understand. Down the road she'll realize how poignant those words were.

_I'm not heartless._

**AN5:** Thoughts? Please? All reviews will be cherished forevermore.


	9. Epoch

**AN1:** Sorry for the wait. This chapter was tough for me to write. And volleyball has been vamping up for the fall season, so I've been busy, and I'm in the thick of my summer softball season.

**AN2:** One thing I think I should say before I continue: Since I rushed a bit through Natasha's childhood, we didn't get to see the more psychological indoctrination. When Natasha was a child, the Red Room focused on the psychological aspects of the training, and as she grew older, it focused more on the physical and tactical. Don't worry, I'll be covering some of it through flashbacks, but I thought I could be nice and concise and just explain too.

**AN3:** Natasha is 14 in this chapter.

***Chapter Warning:** This chapter is rated M, but nothing super explicit.

"Sex," says the instructor, pacing in front of a room full of blank faces, "is a weapon. There is no emotion. Anyone else who tells you differently is most likely trying to manipulate you, or too naive to know the truth. 'Making love' is just an illusion. A naive illusion. You should all know by now that love is for children."

The Widow absorbs the information, eagerly. Another weapon, no matter how bizarre, she would welcome with open arms. Their instructor had just finished explaining _exactly_ how to torture a man or a woman with pleasure. Some of the methods seemed rather strange to her, but she wouldn't complain if they got results.

"Now, all of you have the power to obtain exactly what you need from both men and women using sexual persuasion." She stops in front of a seated Black Widow, eying her up and down as if she were a piece of meat. She doesn't squirm under the scrutiny, but she cannot deny the faint tremor of discomfort in her chest. "Stand up."

The command isn't questioned, _never_ questioned, and she stands.

"Please face your peers." The Widow sits in the front row of the class, and so she turns, just as her instructor asked. Eyes stare blankly. She doesn't whither with the weight of the gazes upon her. She sees the Wolf not too far from where she sits. Her small mouth is quirked into what looks like the subtlest of smirks.

The Widow resists the childish urge to stick her tongue out at her.

The sharpness of the instructor's voice cuts into her diverted focus, "Your peer is a prime example of what the opposite sex likes to see."

Widow widens her eyes, swallowing and looking at the instructor, yet still does not say a word. She feels the pride of being a 'prime example', but a foreign feeling that is a mixture of shame and something else squeezes in next to the pride. It is similar to the roiling mass that rose when the instructor had examined her like a fattened calf. She doesn't like it. It makes her uncomfortable. She places her hands behind their back, lacing her fingers together and clenching.

The instructor walks around her, like surveying cattle at auction. "Scrutinize her. What is it about Widow's body that makes it appealing?"

Now the other girls in the room were studying her, and the Widow cannot help but slowly, _slowly_ and as subtly as she could manage, shifts on her feet. She is relived that no one has noticed her weak moment, but they are still staring, eyes sweeping over her body, their gazes so heavy they almost felt like a physical touch.

White Eagle speaks up first after the long, pregnant pause, "Her breasts." Widow had been surprised they hadn't chosen Eagle to stand before the class as the 'prime example'. After all, according to their teacher, blond hair and blue eyes are an attractive combination, and a curvaceous waist and a stick-thin frame are bonuses.

"Excellent. Something men, especially, will look for is large breasts." The instructor stands next to her. Widow tries to repress a blush. "You all are still young, and thus your breasts will grow with time."

The instructor moves along her body, and Widow is forced to watch quietly, like a tame pet, as each girl in the class listens and critiques with rapt attention and eerie satisfaction. Points of strength. Points of improvement. (_Strong: Breasts. Waist. Butt. Weak: Legs. Back. Hair._)

After a disturbing lesson on fetishes, the Widow is allowed to sit. She doesn't know why, but she feels exposed. Raw. Humiliated.

"Now that you have learned the basics, report to your quarters for an in-depth learning and demonstration."

_Demonstration?_ The rest of the girls filter out the back of the room without further prompting. The Widow is last. She sees that Wolf has waited for her; an uneasy kinship between the two had formed, and Widow is still unsure how to deal with it.

"You waited," states Widow, "Why?" The two are walking towards their quarters. They'd learned that their rooms were quite close together.

"Wanted to wish you luck."

Confusion brushes her conscious, "Again, why?"

"According to the others, the first time is somewhat significant." The Wolf shrugs, as though she doesn't quite understand what the others have said. That makes the two of them.

Widow snorts, "And how would they know?"

"Lioness smuggles things in from the outside. I have no idea how she does it, but we all know it. Apparently everyone who uses her wares think they have some sort of a greater worldview."

"That's awfully pretentious. And precious."

Widow has reached her door. It's open and she spies a young man sitting on her bed, and one of the female instructors in the corner. Widow swallows thickly, suddenly feeling as though she has a brick in her stomach. _The first time is somewhat significant._

Wolf smirks, a combination of sadness and knowing. "Like I said, good luck."

A deep breath. "You too, I guess." She walks in. She recognizes the young man distantly, and realizes he was one of the cadets who watched her beat down the biggest guy in his unit about two years ago. He's attractive, she supposes. Black hair, amber-brown eyes, a strong cleft jaw, broad shoulders, an interesting expression on his face. Her mind, conditioned with training, immediately flips through the possibilities, settles on surprise and lust.

The female instructor does not move from her corner. "The Room has recruited younger males so that this process would be more comfortable."

She nods. Completely silent.

"It's time to practice some of the concepts you've learned. We will finish with your first penetration." The Widow cannot hide her nervousness. Her fear the knots her stomach. Her fingers are tingling, and she's afraid that her hands will start to shake soon. "The first you will learn is the art of oral sex on a male."

She _just _learned about this. It won't be difficult, so she nods. Completely silent.

"On your knees, Widow, and remove his pants."

She does so. Completely silent.

"Take the shaft in your mouth. Take it as deep as you can."

She almost gags, but she does not stop. She distantly hears her subject's breathing quicken.

"What you cannot fit in your mouth, stroke with your hand. Use your spittle as lubricant."

She does so, even though she feels subservient, and _that_ she despises more than almost anything. It's all she can do to keep moving, keep bobbing her head, moving her hand without wanting to choke.

"Apply more pressure. Swirl your tongue around the head."

She complies. Completely silent. She feels disgusted and used, and she can't figure out why. (_Why did I have to learn this? Everything was so simple before._) The man whose legs she kneels between moans audibly.

The uncomfortable silence yawns outward, interrupted by the increasingly frequent cries of pleasure from the man in front of Widow. A sudden wet, warm burst fills her mouth, and she doesn't stop the gag, and pulls away. She's about to spit the salty, sticky liquid that sits atop her tongue, but the words of her instructor stops her, "No. Swallow it."

Not the hardest thing she'd ever done. So why does she feel so reluctant?

Her throat contracts, and it slides down slowly, and she feels as if she has swallowed a raw egg. She stomach twists at the mental imagery.

She kneels on the floor, eyes on the threadbare maroon carpet. She feels like she's down there forever, sitting there on the rough carpet which makes her knees feel raw. She breaths slowly, acknowledgement of what she's about to do stalling in the back of her head. "This lesson is not about torture tactics just yet," the instructor says finally, "this is about getting the experience, so we will end this session with penetration right now. On the bed, Widow." She hears the instructor quietly ask her counterpart if he can get hard again. She hears him answer (_reluctantly?_) in the affirmative.

Widow's joints lock in place. _The first time is somewhat significant._ Acid burns at her throat, everything in her is telling her she does not want this, but she does not listen; she crawls onto the bed, where her partner has made room for her.

"Lie on your back. Cadet Salevsky, please divest her of her clothing." Cadet Salevsky looks wary of the instructor, and Widow thinks it's probably because she was still in the room, but does as he is told. Widow lies corpse still, only moving when he had to remove her panties. The cool air makes goosebumps jump up on her skin. She sees that the cadet lost his shirt sometime between when she had been on her knees until now.

"Spread your legs."

She does so, and never in her life had she felt more humiliated, more disgusted, and more vulnerable. Not even when she's been completely naked and been whipped, or burned, or water-boarded. Never. The bile prods her throat once more. She tilts her head away from the others in the room, stares at the gray concrete wall.

She feels him prod her, feels him pull back, and the hushed, "She's... not wet."

Widow shudders.

"Go anyway. She needs to learn how to become aroused when she's not physically attracted to her target."

She closes her eyes. If her lessons today had been learned, this would hurt. She figures she should probably brace herself. (_Without proper arousal, penetration can be painful, even if intercourse has been completed prior. A first experience of intercourse will always be painful, as the vaginal canal has not experienced any prior stretching, and the hymen must be broken. The experience can be clinically different for any female._)

She anticipates the hurt, tenses herself. But it doesn't come. She looks up at the cadet. His face is frozen in indecision, fighting some internal battle. He must see something in her face because he leans back, looking into the corner where the instructor watches stonily. "I can't do this. This is too fucked up for words."

"You volunteered for this mission, Cadet."

"That was before I knew I'd be signing up to rape a teenage girl!"

The instructor stares him down. Crosses her arms. Adopts an authoritarian pose. "Do I need to write up a citation for insubordination, Cadet Salevsky?"

She sees his throat contract. "N-... No ma'am." He goes back to hovering over her, his weight resting on his forearms. She's still looking up at him. His amber eyes burn with regret. He leans down, and she thinks he's going to kiss her. _Are first kisses significant too?_ But he doesn't. He leans down until his breath warms the shell of her ear. "I'm really sorry," he whispers, so quietly Widow thinks that the instructor probably didn't hear it. She is not confused by it. He's going to hurt her, and she knows it. She hears him say something to himself, she can't quite make it out, but it sounds something like "Shit, my mother taught me better than this..." That truly confuses her.

Then the pain becomes all she knows.

**Thoughts? Please review.**


	10. Stumbling Over the Hidden

**AN1:** Thank you for the reviews, alerts and favorites! Virtual hugs for all of you. I could _always_ use more reviews, though :)

**AN2: **This chapter expands on the idea that Natasha did have some sort of medical augmentation done to her while in the Red Room, which was a part of the comic. Except in this story, what has been done to her and the results will be radically different. It's also a very subtle introduction to the KGB brainwashing if you squint a bit.

**AN3:** Natasha is still about 14 in this chapter. This probably takes place a few months after last chapter.

_Erskine._

_Erskine. Erskine. Erskine.  
_

_The name is repeated several times, hushed and muffled, as though underwater. Something about a series of serums. Will it work? They don't seem certain. Can't replicate the original formula. No guarantees that it will work. They don't know how the original procedure was performed.  
_

_She is laying down. On a hard surface, not perfectly parallel to the ground. Why is everything so foggy?  
_

_"Place the electrodes." This voice is clearer. Masculine and feminine at the same time. She thinks she sees someone in a medical mask lean over her. None of the lines are definite. Points look like pillowed clouds.  
_

_There is sudden pain in her head. Her skull is being split open, parted like the Red Sea, and she feels like Death's own hand is squeezing around her brain. Her throat opens, her lungs heave, but no sound comes out. A scream doesn't come. Her diaphragm struggles, heaves and writhes, but the only thing she can manage is a pained, hissing breath. Suddenly, there's a flash, and she's looking down on herself. Sweat making her skin glitter unnaturally, wild eyes, hair matted from thrashing. And two silver bullet-looking objects protruding from her temples. Blood seeps from her head.  
_

_Another flash and the image is gone. She's staring up at a black sky framing a white sun.  
_

_Needles. So many needles she cannot count them all. They're all going into her, her arms, her legs, her chest, her neck, her head and she's terrified. What are they giving her? She tries to struggle but she finds she's tied down.  
_

_They shove something between her teeth that tastes metallic. She can't move her head.  
_

_She hears them say that they believe channeling electricity through the body is the key to activating the serum.  
_

_Then they just barely touch a electrical prod to the metal object in her mouth. A jolt of pain, waves of some invisible entity rocketing through her. She's immobile, the straps hold her down as the electrical pulse snakes through her, trying to make her something she's not.  
_

Her manner of waking is but a twitch. Her eyes are wide, and a hand clutching the air as if to stop herself from falling. The concrete ceiling of her room is the image she wakes up to. She feels sticky with sweat, and her breathing is labored.

It isn't normal. Not routine.

A nightmare. They taught them how to defend their minds against terrors of unconsciousness. She hadn't had one in years.

She blinks, sees the afterimage of herself, strapped to a table with needles in her body and electrodes driven into her brain. She lies still a few moments before paranoia sweeps through her, and she tears off the sheets. She stares down at her body, halfway anticipating seeing pocked needle marks all over herself. She sees nothing. Her hands fly to her temples. No open wounds with bloody electrodes. She lets out a shaky breath. Scrubs a hand over her face.

She looks over to the digital clock bolted to the wall. An hour until dawn.

Her mind races, so she does what she always does to calm her mind. She makes a list. Her schedule for the day. They hand them out at the beginning of the week.

0630, report to communal hall for inspection and to be fed.

At 0700, hand-to-hand combat observation and technique. _The cadets didn't mess with her anymore unless they're required to by her combat trainer. She could watch combat forms in peace and enjoy their intimidation._

At 1000, torture and interrogation tactics. _She dislikes when she has to use 'sexual persuasion' to get her answers. Especially on women. For some reason she doesn't understand she can't stand having sex with a woman._

At 1300 hours, break for food.

At 1330 hours, advanced computer programming technique. _She struggles to stay awake in this one. She feels like she will scream if she has to enter one more freaking command in binary into a goddamn computer system protected by the most complex firewall they could come up with._

At 1700 hours, drug resistance training._ She hates how they make her feel. How everything is foggy and crystalline sharp at the same time. The panic that invariably rises when she realizes her limbs only sluggishly respond to the simplest commands. Some of them she doesn't respond to at all anymore._

At 2000 hours, report to communal hall for evening inspection and to be fed._  
_

At 2030 hours, recreation time. _'Recreation' is a little generous for what happened. They were closely monitored and had a shitty list of activities to choose from. Widow normally retreated from the group to one of the vacant gyms to practice. Wolf often joined her._

At 2130 hours, return to quarters._  
_

At 2200 hours, sleep._  
_

Her mind has slowed enough that she can control her breathing, feel the sweat evaporate and be replaced with chilled gooseflesh. The images are fading from her mind, becoming more and more difficult to recall. She yanks the covers back over herself. She rolls over and stretches her arms out in front of her to the point of trembling with tension, and-

And feels something. Deep in the pit of her stomach, tight and cold and unwelcome. Anxiety. No- worry... _no._

Fear.

Solid, _certain _as an appointment she mustn't be late for.

She sits up, grabs the edge of her thin, hard mattress. She runs through the list of possible threats, but dismisses them all. There are no such thing as threats in the Red Room. Their facility was one of the most secure facilities in Russia. Nothing tangible to be afraid of comes to her mind, and soon the feeling is fading. A phantom in the night, it was gone as suddenly as it had come. But the confusion lingers.

Her own pride refuses to acknowledge what just occurred. Human emotions are slippery, fundamentally unpredictable variables. The fear was an anomaly. She's not naive enough to believe that she is perfectly immune to human emotion, to the chemically-triggered tricks that fluttered through her brain.

Her psychology instructors told her several times stress could have rather... interesting effects on a psyche. (_Stress can start to fray your edges long before you're aware of it. Be prepared for some odd moments. You may feel... outside yourself every once in a while. The most difficult thing to master is how to manage the stress and the damages._)

She glances again at the clock. Thirty two minutes have passed.

The cold feeling in her stomach returns and becomes ice because she has never just _lost_ time like that before.

She rolls again. Sleep is safer. No thinking. Just pure blank nothingness.

Later the next night, as she lies in bed, and her eyes drift closed and she feels the strings of awakening being snipped, on the black canvas of her lids she sees the eyes of the doctor staring down on her, the electrodes in her temples, the needles pressed into her skin, the blinding white sun throwing shadows into corners of a room she's sure she's never been in before.

And she hears the name again.

Erskine. Erskine. Erskine.

**Let's see those reviews, please!**


	11. Prime

**AN1:** Thanks for all the reviews, favorites and alerts! I treasure you all!

**AN2:** I find it unlikely that they would just lock the girls away without any regard for the outside world, since that would be kind of a culture shock if they did that and then sent them away on missions. And waiting until she was older could've presented some psychological challenges, and she needed to be immersed in a violent environment from an early age.

**AN3:** This will be the last chapter for about a week because this weekend I have the National Tournament for softball. I have a home run derby tonight, so wish me luck :) then I'm headed up to the cabin, so I hope this chapter tides you over.

**AN4: **Natasha is 15 in this chapter.

She hadn't expected to be nervous. Not the type of nervous that would result from doubting her skills, (_because the Widow never doubts herself_) but from the knowledge that _this is it_, and failure is absolutely not an option. Her first mission is nothing complex- some government official who needed to be removed. (_T__hey told her to not ask why she had to kill him. Never ever ask why._) No interrogation, no actual spying or intel gathering. Just a quick in and out hit.

She knows it's technically illegal to 'mess around' with someone who's her age, but as she'd learned over the years, illegality didn't exactly apply to her. And many people ignore the law anyway. She has a mission, and to hell with the red tape, and the Widow didn't blink twice when the obviously uncomfortable receptionist told her that the ambassador would be waiting for her in his apartments. For a 'talk'. She could've snorted with ridicule, but she doesn't, maintains the mask of aloof prostitute. Cheeks aflame, voice weak and stuttering, the receptionist wouldn't ask questions, and that's enough.

She fiddles with the cinch on her trench coat, covering the scanty outfit hidden underneath as she enters the apartments. The target waits in the bedroom, and she immediately matches his face to the profile she was given. (_Approximately 170 cm tall, 110-120 kilogram weight class, age 64, gray hair, hazel eyes..._) His age shows, with features sagged and drooping, but his expression becomes hungry when he sees his 'entertainment' walk in.

Widow doesn't allow herself to be disgusted by his scrutiny. She pulls the belt on her coat, shrugs it off her shoulders, feels the cool air hit her skin as the beige covering pools at her feet.

His expression reads that he is pleased with what he sees. The number she's squeezed herself into is a leather corset of red and black that makes her hair look like a flame. Black garters support see-though thigh-high stockings. She's balanced expertly on precarious 5 and a half inch red stiletto heels that make her ankles hurt and her arches ache. (_Looking beautiful is only a part of manipulating the target. It is not practical to think in terms of vanity when it comes to your opinion of your own attractiveness._)

He wastes no time in grabbing her hand and pulling her down onto the bed until she is seated beside him. He touches her lips, smiles, "You are _beautiful_," he says.

She feels her teeth grinding, puts on the guise of the smiling, flattered courtesan, but inside she's seething. She doesn't like to be touched by anyone, let alone someone as repulsive as this man. She wishes she had more leeway in how she got to kill him. Alas, she had incredibly specific parameters as to how he would be dispatched. It wouldn't be beneficial for her to go overboard, to go _against_ her orders, on her very first assignment.

She forces out a girlish giggle at his attention, and he obviously likes it. She bites her lower lip coyly (_draw him in_), says, "Turn around."

His smiles fades minutely. "I'm sorry?"

She gives him a hooded look, dark and smoldering, trying to earn his trust through seduction. "I want to try something. You'll like it." She's pleasantly surprised with how husky and sexy her voice sounds. She's been trying to master it in her acting classes for weeks.

He raises an eyebrow, but she can see the dilated pupils and knows that he will obey. He twists slowly, exposing his back to her (_gain his trust_) as he kneels on the bed on his hands and knees. She's glad she doesn't have to toy with him before his death. She doesn't know if she could handle having sex with this man.

The Widow reaches into her hair- expertly coiffed, in a style that was popular with the Russian courtesans- and slowly slid out a garishly jeweled pin. Crusted with faceted obsidian stones and shining red rubies, she thinks that it's maybe the prettiest little thing she's ever seen. She likes to think that it's like her- unimposing and pretty on the surface, but with the potential to kill. She internally chastises herself for thinking herself beautiful. (_Looking beautiful is only a part of manipulating the target. It is not practical to think in terms of vanity when it comes to your opinion of your own attractiveness._)

"Close your eyes," she says.

"Am I at your mercy, Valeriya?" he asks, and Widow almost doesn't hear him use her fake name. He closes his eyes.

It takes her less than a second to locate the precise spot where her weapon would do the most damage. She slowly flips the pin in her hand so that the sharp end stabs toward the prone man on the bed. "Yes. You are," she says, playing along in that voice that she's so proud of. She leans over his exposed back (_take out the target_) and in one swift motion, plunges it into the base of his skull, where she knows it will split his spinal cord and lodge in his cerebellum. An instantaneous death with little bleeding. Quick and efficient. The lights of the bedroom glisten off the jewels, still buried in the neck of her mark, just below his hairline.

She follows the directions to the letter. (_destroy evidence that you were there_) Replacing her trench coat, she checks his pulse, does not find one, checks his pupils to make sure there is no response to light. None. She drags the body up the bed, and literally tucks him in. She takes a step back, and sees that it seriously appears that he is only asleep. She shuts off the lights in the bedroom and leaves, headed for the apartment door. But something makes her stop.

She looks around, nothing is amiss. She knows the hit was carried out without an issue. Without knowing why, she reaches into the pocket of her trench coat, and pulls out the jeweled pin. Her instructions had been specific. Take the pin, dispose of it in a trash can no less than ten blocks from the target's residence. But she doesn't want to throw out the little bit of jewelry. She's not a greedy girl, not vain, and the thought of jewelry doesn't draw her in or anything. But she can't help but admire the deep obsidian, polished pristine so that she can almost see her self reflected on the black surface. The rubies glitter, the facets throwing off such light and shine she trails a fingernail over the surface.

There's only a slight hesitation as she raises the pin back to her hair, and slides the wiped pin back into her hair. The small act of defiance feels good, a balm to her rigid soul.

With that, she strides out of the room. The secretary is gone, as the profile had said she always was when the ambassador's toys came to be played with. She doesn't see anyone until she reached the elevator in the main hall. A middle-aged woman is inside and held the door for Widow.

The number for the first floor is already lit up, so she stands with her hands loose at her sides, and in the quiet she realizes her fingers are tingling with dissipating adrenaline. It is the first rush of nerves she's felt in a long time.

"Isn't it a bit late for you to be out by yourself?" the woman asks. She sounds kind.

The Widow doesn't answer. She stares straight ahead, counting the floors as they pass, her miniscule act of defiance shining in her mind.


	12. Impossibility

**AN1:** Note to self, never tell your readers when you're going out of town because you'll get no reviews :P jokes, but thanks for those who DID review! Sorry for the update rift! This chpater wasn't my favorite, but I felt it was somewhat necessary.

**AN2: **This chapter is my attempt at making the girls seem a bit more normal, inasmuch as they can be, because despite the fact that they were raised away from society, I still think that they would retain some of the usual qualities of your average teenagers. Well, average teenagers with badass super spy skills.

**AN3:** Natasha is almost 16 in this chapter.

She waits quietly in the dark, her sharp ears listening for the guards to pass by her room. She can hear their footfalls beyond the thick metal door and concrete wall. She lays motionless in her bed until the footfalls fade. The clock tells her that the guards will be changing shifts, and she will have a five minute window.

She whips off her covers, revealing her black, skin-tight suit. She's been looking forward to getting out for days, and she was prepared when she went to bed. She moves quickly. The clock is ticking. She carefully opens the door, steps out into the vacant hall. She looks upwards, towards the vent that is her ticket to freedom. The rungs are wide, perfect for her nimble fingers.

She swings her arms back, crunches her legs, _leaps_ for all she's worth, and finds purchase on the unsteady vent. The screws protest with inaudible groans at the added weight, but they hold until Widow uses a thumbnail to unscrew two of them. The vent falls open on it's hinges, and she easily crawls up into the ventilation system.

The girls had a policy for everyone sneaking out: you better be pretty damned good at it and not get caught, or don't come at all. And the Black Widow is very, _very _good. She knows these aluminum tunnels are notorious for creaking, so she slides along slowly on her belly, _like a penguin_ she always thinks wryly.

She remembers the turns easily. _Five meters, then right. Thirty meters, then left. Forty-three meters, then right. Climb up five stories. Continue straight. Kick out vent cover._

The vent tumbles to the ground, just a few feet from the opening in the imposing brick wall and she slithers down the six foot drop to the grass. The dark sky watches with a crescent moon nearly at the zenith of the sky as a red-headed super spy skitters across the grass with grace that shouldn't be possible for someone her age. She sticks to the shadows, the blind spots of the cameras outside of the facility. She dances around the places where she knows there are pressure sensors

She wriggles herself underneath the chain link fence, topped with vicious-looking razor wire. It's electrified, but this back part is almost always left off due to circuitry issues they seem to not want to spend the money to fix. She could almost laugh at the horribly funny situation. They spend so much on security and can't even make sure the fence's electrical charge is working and is properly sutured to the ground at the back of the facility. Gross negligence, almost.

She doesn't pay attention to her keepers' inattentiveness right now. She needs to move. Like a rabbit, she darts into the trees flanking the facility as a giddy grin tinges her lips. She's out. Now it's time to have some fun.

The closest big city to the facility was Surgut, and it was about 20 minutes away, if she ran. And run she would, as she dug her feet into the soft earth and bolted forward, setting a brisk pace towards the city. The sliver of moon and billions of stars overhead dimly light her path, one she'd taken many times to get to the city. She sometimes finds it hard to believe that they can escape so easily, but she always passes it off on luck and skill.

She recognizes she's getting close when she can't see so many stars. The light pollution makes it impossible, and she looks to the horizon, sees the sky becoming a lighter purple.

She's close.

She stays out of view of the main road. Seeing a teenage girl sprinting along the side of the highway would raise some eyebrows. She runs through the trees, like a flitting ghost, feels the moisture in the air in her lungs, the bark roughly brushing past her, branches whipping at her face as she continues her headlong run. She's sweating and breathing hard, but running for miles is easy now.

The outskirts are where she finally slows. It begins with small suburbs, and she quickly skirts through those, and through the warehouse districts, headed for downtown, where the rest of the girls are. And where all the action is.

They've all decided to meet at some club called Molnija. Lightning. No one can figure out how Lioness has so many connections on the outside to find these clubs.

She spots Wolf outside the brick building, the doorway guarded by a burly-looking bouncer, she grins at the other girl. Wolf has her black hair in a french braid down her back and pulled away from her delicate features. Her attire is exactly what will get them into the club. An ice blue haltered cocktail dress that makes her eyes look electric, and barely even constitutes a dress considering the lack of fabric used, showing off so much of the Wolf's pale skin that she looks ethereal and alluring. She looks more like a Blue Wolf than a Red.

"You look good," Widow says on approach, and she's barely even winded by now.

There's a glimmer of humor in Wolf's eyes, something rare, and Widow never sees it when they're inside. Only when they're free does she truly _see_ Wolf. "Thanks. I'd say the same, but what you're wearing doesn't exactly scream attractiveness," she says, holding out a black garment bag.

Widow figures they're probably wearing stolen clothes, but she doesn't care as she reaches for the zipper. "I tend to think that I can make this look work," she says with an air of confidence and a twisted smirk. The suit does an excellent job of absorbing moisture and dispelling it, keeping her immensely cool, but she's not afraid to admit the thing makes her feel suffocated after she's been in it too long. She trains in it all day, every day, so her skin never sees daylight when she's training. The skimpy outfits they end up wearing are a welcome change of pace.

The silky green fabric that tumbles out makes her smile. The dress is similar in cut to Wolf's except Widow's is strapless, showing off shoulders toned by years of intense training. Tiny gems adorn the tight skirt, and she feels like a little green flame when she finally slides it on in the darkness outside the club. "Got some shoes for me or am I going to have to wear these?" She gestures down to her combat boots which came off with the suit.

Wolf rolls her eyes, "Do you always have to underestimate me?" She tosses a pair of silver heels in Widow's direction. "It gets annoying." They aren't the prettiest ones she's ever worn, a relatively low heel with an unexciting t-strap, but she doesn't care much as she slips them on.

"Let's go catch some tail," Widow says, unabashed carnal pleasures falling through her mind.

She hesitates before placing her last item, the one she brought with her. She's about to toss it into a trash can, which she should've done months ago on that first mission, but on second thought, she withdraws the red-and-black jeweled pin from a pocket on her suit. _This is it_, she thinks. _I can't keep this any more_. She's hidden it for months, and there's been missions since that first one which she'd completely flawlessly, but she just doesn't want to part with it. But she knows she has to, and she resolves to throw it away at the end of the night as she slides it into the sleek bun she's put her hair in. Just one last time. She doesn't care that it doesn't match the rest of her outfit. She's feeling rebellious, and the pin just feels right.

Wolf voices her agreement for scoping out some fine specimens of the opposite gender, but she doesn't miss the pin. "Where did you get that?" No maliciousness in her tone, just curiosity.

Widow bristles slightly, because she knows how good an actor Wolf is and she could just be getting her to blab about not completely following orders. But she wants to tell her. For some reason she does not understand, she... trusts Wolf. That sentiment nearly blows Widow off her feet. Trust is something she was never taught, and didn't think that she had the capacity for until this moment. She had considered her inability to trust an absolute strength. "That ambassador that was killed a few months ago."

Widow's answer is vague, but sufficient. She knows Wolf has been on missions too. She'll know what she means. "That's dangerous," Wolf points out, still sounding non-judgmental, but Widow still registers a note of surprise.

"Thanks, I wasn't aware of that," Widow bites back sarcastically.

Wolf's tone is no longer curious. "You need to get rid of it. After tonight, throw it away. They can't find you with it, or who knows what they'll do."

"Is that a hint a hint of worry I hear, Wolf?" the redhead jests playfully, but Wolf remains stony.

"This isn't a joke, Widow. You could be in seriously deep shit if they find out."

The Widow grits her teeth, says, "I don't need to be looked after, Wolf. I can take care of myself just fine."

Wolf looks incredulous, "Evidently not! Why the hell didn't you just dispose of it like they told you to?" She didn't need to know the fine details to take educated guesses as to what the mission orders were.

Widow hesitates, and then, another thing she wasn't sure she could truly do, she tells the truth, "I don't really know."

Her companion runs a worried hand over her hair, closing her eyes and then opening them. She stands right in front of Widow, and she notices for the first time that they are looking eye to eye, which almost never happened since Wolf was so short. "After tonight, you're tossing it. If you don't, I will." She walks past Widow, towards the club entrance. "Now come on. We're late."

"Why the hell do you keep helping me?" Widow asks, all urgency as she whirls to face Wolf. She honest-to-god could not figure out the true reason for Wolf's... kindness. There was no other word for it. The only word she could really use for Wolf was a _friend_. She didn't have another word, in any language, that aptly described Wolf. She'd only read about 'friend', seen definitions of 'friend', but never experienced 'friend'.

Wolf only grins in that condescending way that only Widow can truly manage. "For someone who is as intelligent as you, I can't believe you haven't figured it out yet."

"The only solution I've thought of wouldn't make sense." Friends. Trust. All foreign and not to be dabbled with. (_Trust breeds mediocrity. Friendship is only a tool to be used, much like sexuality, but a friendship can sometimes yield even more than seduction._)

"Except that you're right."

Silence falls over the alley, the only sound is bass vibrating from the club, the sounds of a vibrant city in the distance. Despite the uncertainty and the _fear_ of what this might mean, Widow says, "You realize this means we're completely fucked, right?"

Wolf smiles, "Completely."

It's not perfect, and it's not normal, but there it is, as the girls wearing false clothes and fake names waltz into the club under the guise of something they can never hope to be.

**'Molnija' was just so close to 'mjolnir', and I just thought that was a hoot so I had to include it in some way.  
**

******On a side note, I've begun a tumblr that I post a bunch of stuff relating to my stories. I post chapter previews, alternate scenes, etc. The link is on my profile if you feel like taking a peek at it.**

**I hope you enjoyed this! Please review!  
**


	13. So Far Away

**AN1:** Thanks for all the follows and favorites! The reviews are what truly get chapters done, so _please please please_ review. I've got 95 followers thus far, and I haven't heard from all of you! Let's try to break 50 reviews before next chapter :)

**AN2:** This chapter is inspired by the scene in _Batman Begins _with Ra's al Ghul and Bruce training on the frozen lake. And I live in Minnesota, so I know cold. Ever done a polar plunge? It's a surefire way to usher in spring. Maybe get frostbite. Either or.

**AN3:** Natasha is 16 years old in this chapter.

The cold is suffocating. She breaths in the frozen air, snowflakes biting her skin. The snow crunches beneath her feet. She's not wearing any shoes. The instructors had dragged them out of bed in the middle of the night, and they weren't given a change of clothes. Many of the girls were wearing nothing but tank tops and panties. Widow thanked her luck that she'd at least worn pants to bed that night, but it still did nothing to protect her from the fierce Siberian cold.

She's standing with ten other girls, and she's sad that Wolf is not among them. Half of them have begun to shiver, and White Eagle's lips have begun to turn blue. She has a sinking feeling that if she could see everyone's toes, there would be varying stages of blue to black. She doesn't quite feel it that badly yet. Or maybe she's just numb. She can't really figure it out.

"Your future missions may require you to survive in unbelievable conditions, with very little to protect yourself," the only survival instructor Widow has met says, pacing slowly in front of the line of girls, all standing straight at attention, despite the fact that many of them cannot feel their feet. "This is a short, simple exercise, and one that is essential to survival."

She takes a few steps back, toward the frozen lake. "Hand-to-hand combat on ice, and surviving in the instance that you might fall through."  
Widow can't help but notice that the instructor is garbed in heavy winter gear. She got snowshoes and a thick jacket, and they had to hike here for a good 40 minutes through three foot deep snow in nothing but underclothes. Widow wants to punch her. A lot. Preferably many times until the snow is no longer white.

Her skin feels stiff, and she can no longer feel anything below her knees. She can almost feel her eye fluid freezing on her eyeball when she doesn't blink for a few moments.

"I'll pair you up." Frozen girls are then forced out onto the middle of the lake, and the survival instructor watches as the temperature-stiffened joints try to move as they begin to spar.

Widow had been paired with White Eagle, who looks like she's about two steps from frozen. Widow doesn't want to feel pity for her opponent, but she does. Eagle seems more susceptible to the cold than the rest. Of course, Black Widow's extremities feel like they're about to fall off, but she toughs it out, like always.

Her first move on the nearly defenseless Eagle is a simple roundhouse kick. She doesn't even know if she can handle anything else. Despite her stiffened state, her kick is fluid, hard. She's not trying to kill, so she only aims for Eagle's shoulder.

It's a testament to how out of it she is that Eagle's defense is slow and sluggish. She's always been a quick, agile defender, and Widow feels worry replace pity. Eagle is shivering violently, and her eyes are blank and listless. Her finger and toes were most definitely an interesting shade of blue. Her lips are turning purplish.

The kick lands on the thick muscle of her shoulder, and Eagle is knocked off balance, and stumbles to the side. Widow knows how to fight, takes it as what it is- the weak point. The shatter point. The point where she can take control of this fight. She darts forward, the cold only a small hindrance in the back of her mind, and slams an unforgiving elbow into the side of Eagle's neck.

She goes down like a ragdoll, and the creak and groan of shifting ice breaks her focus for the barest of moments. She was almost worries it would break, but but her best estimation, there was a least a foot and a half of solid water beneath her feet. It would take a lot more than a girl falling down to break through.

Her breath is making foggy puffs in the air as she extends her focus to the four other pairs spread out on the ice. Her spar is the only one that is complete, her opponent the only one down groaning on the moving ice.

The survival instructor wanders over. "Good, Black Widow. They told me you would do exceedingly well." She turns a disapproving gaze to Eagle, who has curled into a loose fetal position, her body instinctively trying to preserve what heat it has left. "We hoped you would do better, White Eagle. This is very disappointing."

Eagle doesn't respond, looking close to despondency on the ice.

Widow's throat feels like it's closing.

She wants to go down on the ice with Eagle, try to help her or _something_ because it's just so damn _pitiful_ to see her down there.

She stares in inaction as the rest of the fights come quietly to a close around her.

"Losers," the instructors yells out, voice bouncing off the ice, "Over here. Now."

The five who'd had the misfortune of being beaten in the frigid conditions shuffle over to the instructor like a death march, and Widow notices the hole in the thick ice. Her breath catches as she realizes exactly what the instructor is having them do.

"Since," the instructor began with a military-ramrod position, "you cannot handle a simple spar while you are cold, you are being given the task of swimming in frigid water. As you can see here, we've cut a hole into the ice. And, twenty meters that way," she gestures down the ice, where an identical, jagged opening lays, cold waters gently lapping the sides, "there is another opening. Swim under the ice to the other hole, or you will drown." Her tone is informative, matter of fact. As if risking your life for an inane purpose was perfectly logical.

One by one, they jump. Super-cooled water sloshes out of the opening as their bodies enter the lake. Wind whistles through the trees, and Widow and the other barely-winners stand and watch for the first ones to emerge.

At least 31 seconds pass before anyone comes out.

It's Dark Falcon, and she's gasping and choking for air. Her name aptly describes her, with dark hair and eyes and tanned skin. Her skin looks paler now, and she's trembling violently. But Widow has never felt more respect for her as she drags herself out of the opening, spits up more water, and finally rolls away from the water, finally settling on her back. Her breathing looks shallow.

No one moves to assist her.

It's 47 seconds before a second head emerges, and Widow sees the blonde hair and knows it's Eagle. She expects (_she can't bring herself to say 'hopes'_) her to get out, just as Falcon had moments before. One quaking hand reaches for the ice's edge, and she... falls. Her hand slips off the edge, her torso splashes back into the water. Then, she sinks. Her hand is still raised, and Widow realizes it's in a half-hearted hope that someone would grab her hand and pull her out...

Widow chokes as the frozen fingers slip beneath the surface.

It feels like she's outside herself as she watches her feet begin to move, to _run_, towards the water. She doesn't stop to search around on the surface, and she only has time to think _What the hell am I doing?_ with the furious shouts of the survival instructor in her ears as she dives into the water.

As she breaks the barrier between the air and the water, her breath rushes from her lungs in an intense stream of bubbles. The water is so, so dark, almost black, and her eyes feel like they're freezing as she peels them open. She looks around frantically, not seeing Eagle anywhere, so she swims deeper, even though everything in her is telling her to _go back,_ but she won't listen.

Her ribcage feels like it's being constricted when she finally spots a blob of pale yellow hair, waving like sea kelp. (_How long has she been under?_) She kicks her legs, and she feels the cold seeping into her bones and can barely rotate her shoulders enough, kick her legs enough to paddle down to where Eagle is still sinking, hand still outstretched, albeit more relaxed.

Widow reaches for the hands, grasps it, and yanks the deadweight to her side and fits an arm around her torso. When she looks back up, she can't resist the panic that surges through her when she sees how far away the opening is. Being who she is, she doesn't care if her situation seems desperate, she's going to fight like a hellcat until she's no longer breathing.

Her body feels like it's at war as she begins to make her way to the surface, her body feels frozen, her skin like ice, but her lungs burn like a furnace that refuses to heat the rest of her. She feels it in her eyes now, and she can't stop herself from pulling in a deep breath, and the cold water rushes into her lungs. There's suffocation, freezing, burning, everything culminating inside of her and she's convinced she literally _can't swim anymore._

And then there's glorious air in her lungs, and she tries to gasp it in, but the water coughs from her throat of it's own accord. She doesn't notice that almost everyone has gathered around the opening as she drags herself and Eagle from the icy prison. She's on her hands and knees and her throat _hurts_ and her body is moving of it's own accord and writhing as it rids itself of the water. And she's _so cold._

She can't stop trembling, so violently she feels like she's having a seizure.

Her head tilts, and she sees that Eagle's not moving, and her eyes are closed and she looks peaceful and _dead._ "Oh, hell no," she grinds out. She can't believe she still has the capacity to move as she scrambles to Eagle's side. She leans an ear down by her nose, listens for breathing, and hears only the moan of shifting ice. She feels no pulse under her fingertips, and the pupils framed by sky blue irises don't contract when she looks at them.

"Fuck you, Eagle," she whispers as she begins compressions. "You better fucking breath in the next two seconds or I'll kill you myself."

There's no response to her words, and Widow tries not to think of how the fight could have damaged Eagle, made her unable to swim to her full capabilities. She's so cold it hurts.

"Breath, damnit!" Widow yells at Eagle's white and blue face. She doesn't notice the other girls clustering around her, their hushed whispers, or the instructor furiously breaking into the group.

"Widow," the instructor says adamantly, "she's dead."

Widow doesn't listen. "There's no such thing as cold and dead until she's warm and dead," she says, copying the matter-of-fact tone the instructor had used. No one moves at her distress, so Widow yells, "Start a fucking fire, you useless swine!"

"Nobody move!" yells the instructor as the girls begin to move at the urgency of Widow's command. She turns back to Widow and the downed girl. "Widow, if you do not get off the ground in the next three seconds, I might just leave you here and let you find your own way back to the facility."

"First off, it's ice I'm sitting on," Widow points out, and she can't be sure how she can manage to be sassy when she so goddamned _cold_, but she manages it. "And second, I'd welcome that. I'd be fine. Excellent even if I could build a fire." (_Maybe not, but now is most certainly not the time to be showing doubts._)

She can tell the instructor is gritting her teeth, and Widow starts to worry when she can't feel her fingers anymore. She can't put up a fight when the instructor grasps her hair, ignoring her previous threats, and literally drags her off the ice, leaving a frozen Eagle lying on the lake. She's conscious (_barely_) as she's dragged back the way they came. She's so numb she can't quite feel anything, but she looks up, the coniferous trees piercing the sky, almost like pointy fingers stabbing up into the infinite blue she hadn't seen until that moment. The infinite blue that looked so much like the dead eyes she just watched close and never open again.

The image of that blue stays with her until she finally surrenders the battle and closes her own eyes. She absently wonders if she'll ever have the strength to open them again.

**For this chapter, I'm operating under the assumption that the temperature is around 38-40 degrees Fahrenheit, 3-4 degrees Celcius outside the water.**

**Something that I never addressed, all the girls in the Red Room are products of my imagination. You won't find them on Wikipedia.  
**

**Please leave a review! Let's try for at least fifty reviews, and maybe the next chapter will be up a bit sooner than this one. You never know ;) But yeah. You should review.  
**


	14. Purpose

**AN1:** Holy crows, you guys. Maybe I should give you a quota more often because I literally got to fifty reviews in, like, 30 minutes. No joke. THANK YOU SO MUCH! Now shall I dare ask for... 70?

**AN2:** In response to an anonymous reviewer's critique about this story being too slow: This story was never planned to be a super quick review of what Natasha used to be, and then Clint jumps right in after a few chapters and saves her. I promise he will be coming in after a few more chapters because I can't stay away from Jeremy Renner for too long. This story was always meant to be an in-depth examination of Natasha's childhood and upbringing, and what exactly made her the way she is. Because I think she's a wonderfully complex character and there's a lot you can do with that.

**AN3:** This chapter is a departure from what we've seen thus far because it starts as a different POV. There's a bit of mystery in this first segment, but all will be explained in time. This chapter is a big set up for the sequels to this story... whoa. Spoiler alert, bro.

**AN4:** Major props to _PumpkinSpiceLatte_ for giving me the push to get this chapter out early. ;)**  
**

**AN5:** And so, after all those author's notes, Natasha is almost 17 in this chapter.

"She is our most promising candidate," says Andrei Volkov, the psychology doctor whose program was responsible for the girls in front of him. He knows the General has always been impressed with his work, and today he wanted to directly observe the girls in their sparring practice. It didn't surprise him in the least. The Red Room program was reaching its conclusion, and he wanted to get a feel for the prime operative. "Your friend Sorolov trained her personally in this form of combat."

General Mikhail Rebrenovich watches with a critical eye the redheaded whirlwind. Mischa had always had high praise for the girl's natural talents. She was a rather impressive specimen. Unintimidating if she wasn't currently putting opponent after opponent into the mats. That was what made her so perfect- no one would suspect her. They never went after the pretty ones, he'd learned. "I can see why, Doctor. I've looked at her completed missions. She is a remarkable asset."

"And she is a master of interrogation tactics, has a high pain tolerance, and has shown no adverse side affects from the mind wipes." These 'mind wipes' (_brainwashing __just sounds so barbaric_) are Dr. Volkov's pride and joy. With a certain stream of chemicals, paired with visual and auditory stimulation, he could wipe entire memories from the subject's mind. It is a wonderful culmination of his research, but his employers wanted a way to remove emotional centers from a subject without altering brain chemistry. It is a fascinating project, but one that challenged him greatly, and made him wonder if it was even possible.

"Are there any other recruits showing scores as good as hers?" asks General Rebrenovich.

Dr. Volkov looks over his notes, "Red Wolf," he points out the pixie-like girl, delicate both in facial features and in stature, who has taken on the apparently unwanted task of sparring with the Black Widow, "has showed high scores in all areas, and she is the only one who has ever defeated Widow in a spar. Others have come close, but have all lost."

"Are there any risks with either of them? I need a reliable agent, Doctor."

Volkov hesitates minutely, appears to briefly consider making it seem as if his program is flawless, but apparently decides that full disclosure would be more favorable, "With any psychological experiment, there are risks for a psychological break. We've conditioned their minds against such an occurrence, but the human mind is fundamentally unpredictable."

"Have they shown an aptitude for compassion?" His tone is disgusted, haughty as if 'compassion' is something to be despised.

Dr. Volkov sighs. This is the one fall-through with the two prospects. "They both have a number of times. There are full summaries in their files of the occurrences if you wish to see them. It also appears that they've formed something of a friendship."

"That might be a useful point of manipulation," Rebrenovich murmurs quietly. He looks back to Volkov, "I would like to see their full files."

"Of course." The doctor continues, "We've tried to design environments to suppress these tendencies, but we've thus far been, for the majority of the time, unsuccessful."

"The majority?"

"We've had marginal success with wiping certain emotional experiences, but the procedure hasn't been perfected. We're having trouble erasing the emotion from the brain directly. It's not that precise yet, and we've only been able to erase memories. We've found that some of the girls are genetically psychopathic, but none of them are as talented as Black Widow or Red Wolf."

"I trust you're continuing to work on the procedure?"

"Of course, sir. It's been our primary objective."

"When will they be fully mission capable?"

"Very soon. The final test is coming quickly. Then, if the Black Widow does as I expect she will, she will be ready within the year."

He pauses as he watches as Widow is knocked onto her back by the Red Wolf, but quickly recovers. She looks determined, and a sheen of sweat covers her face as she leaps at the Wolf; her gymnastic form of combat is an impressive sight as the Widow's opponent crashes to the mat with pained grunt. "Are you sure she'll be able to kill them all?"

"Most certainly, sir."

* * *

Widow helps Wolf off her back with a disarming smile. "You know, if you hadn't backed off when you put me down you might've had me," she says. "Key word being 'might.'" Her opponent looks up, and Widow follows suit, seeing the two men who have been watching the days' sparring from a high balcony above the mats.

"Who are they? I don't think they're instructors." Wolf observes.

Widow wracked her brain, "I'm not sure. I've seen the bald one around, but this army guy's new."

"Jeez, I don't remember him. I wish I had your memory."

"You and everyone else."

"God, you're so smug sometimes."

"When you're born with a photographic memory I think you can afford to be smug about anything you want," Widow jested playfully.

"Smartass."

They stand side by side, staring down the men who are still uncomfortably observing the entire gym. They stare right back. They give off an air like that of tyrants, and Widow isn't sure she should even be reading into the situation. (_Don't question, don't question, don't question..._) She feels a sudden rush of anger, disgust and something else, her fingers tingle as she looks at the bald one. She feels like she knows him from somewhere. _Why?_ She ignores the gnawing emotion.

Widow and Wolf both know their time slots are done with, and end the uncomfortable stare down with the observers. They both head for the trash cans near the doors. As they begin unwrapping the tape from their hands and wrists (_the tape is the one concession they're allowed_) Widow sees an interesting expression on Wolf's face. She knows it as _suspicion,_ as _foreboding._ Emotions she didn't expect to even exist on Wolf's face.

"What's the matter?"

She remains quiet a moment, seemingly fascinated with the tape on her hands before she says, "Things are changing. I can't explain it, but... the air just feels _different_ somehow." She continues to unravel the white adhesive from her hands.

Widow knows what she means. Things were changing with incredible speed. For someone who'd lived her life a certain way for as long as she could remember, the change was obvious. She doesn't flinch as she rips the tape roughly past still-healing blisters and cuts.

Instruction was down to near zero, and all they'd done recently was fight the other girls and go on missions. Widow didn't mind, she preferred the action much more than classroom work anyway. The missions were... just missions. Her mind went to a different place when she killed, and it was almost a... fog that she just lost herself in. The fog of seduce, torture, kill. It was automatic, what she was made to do. She'd learned that she'd always had these... skills. (_Your talents cannot be wasted on normalcy, Widow. You have the privilege of being special. To waste such talent would be criminal._) Widow comes back to herself. "Changing how? I know they've changed our schedules for more fighting and whatnot, but..."

Wolf bites her lip as she abandons the last pieces of tape and Widow follows suit, rubbing the newly revealed skin gently, awakening the deadened nerve endings, and the pair walks out into the hallway. Wolf is silent, but Widow doesn't repeat her question. She knows she heard it, and she knows Wolf- she won't ignore it. They have an hour of free time before their next session, and neither of them really know what to do. They used to retreat to one of the vacant gyms and practice, trying to perfect each others' technique. Now, they're barred from the gyms, and they couldn't quite figure out why.

"You know that feeling when you feel as if the end is near?" Wolf suddenly asks. Widow gives her an odd look (_not the answer she was expecting_), but nods anyway. "That's what I'm experiencing at the moment. It's not pleasant."

Widow swallows, not entirely familiar with the concept, but enough knowledge to make an educated guess. Wolf's gut almost never led her astray. "I'm sure we'll be fine."

"Will we? Look at what's going on- we're being observed much more closely during training, we've got no classes, only physical training, more and more difficult missions, and all these military guys keep coming around and watching us. Something is happening, and I don't like not knowing what."

Widow bit her lip in contemplation. All true points, but she'd always been taught to never dissect motives... "If I was the philosophic type, I'd say you were right. But since I'm not, and we shouldn't be questioning our superiors, I'm choosing to ignore it."

Wolf softly smiled at Widow's answer. "I feel like the answer is in my mind somewhere, but I just... can't remember it," she finishes softly, wistfully.

Widow had experienced those moments as well, just random gaps in what would seem like knowledge that she should have. Mostly small pieces of missions, and that's _so weird_ because she remembers _everything_, even when her adrenaline is running a mile a minute, sometimes after she's snuck out, large chunks of time she just doesn't remember (_if she drank on those outings, she could've blamed the booze, but she didn't drink. Didn't want to put anything into her body that might change her, change her reaction time, make her less able to fight. She didn't let her guard down like that_). When she saw the man in the gym, she somehow felt like he was tied to it, but she had no evidence to support the... _feeling. _Ick. Feelings and emotions were _unpredictable. _And Widow hates emotional unpredictability. She makes a derisive sound, "I don't like the word 'feeling'." And with that, the absolute strangeness of their conversation flees (_she's never known Wolf to act so emotional and insubordinate_) and levity replaces it.

Wolf only laughs as they finally arrive outside Widow's room. "Hey, let me show you something," Widow says, leading Wolf into her room.

She drops onto her stomach and shimmies under her bed, heading for the corner of her room. "Excellent job," Wolf says sarcastically.

"Shut up and give me two seconds." She pulls up the edge of the carpet, revealing the concrete floor beneath, and a few sheets of paper. She withdraws the small packet of papers that she'd hidden. Instructors did not encourage free thougt and design, so Widow was breaking _a lot _of rules to have done this, to have kept it. Wolf's gasp tells her as much.

"Christ, and I thought you were a daredevil for hanging onto that damned pin. How on earth did you hide that? Also, where the hell did you get that much paper and a pencil?"

Widow rolls her eyes, "Just look at it. I designed it." She hands over the designs and says, "I call it the Widow's Bite. Clever, right?" Widow's mind was very well-oriented in designing weapons, she'd even designed a few gas-chamber handguns that she liked _almost _as much as the Bite. "It's not finished yet, but I'm thinking it's going to be like a laser, energy blast type of thing. Theoretically, this works great, but I'll probably never know unless I can actually build it."

The design was a thick bracelet, a gauntlet almost, with two small output cells on the gloved portion that ran back to the bullet-like power cells around the wrists. There were deconstructions of each part occupying every inch of paper, which was indicative of her absolute lack of it. Wolf had no doubts that her friend had whittled the pencil down until there was literally no lead left in it. "This is impressive," Wolf says. "I hope I can see them for real sometime."

Widow took the drawings back, running her fingers over the paper. Yeah, she'd probably never build these, but it was fanciful to think. Think that if she could someday get out from under the watchful eyes of her handlers that she could get the parts to build it. "Yeah, I doubt it," she says dismissively, and she tries to quell the rising sadness that her designs will never see the light of day. She crawls back down and replaces it under the flap of carpet.

She pops back up, adn starts shucking her clothing, heedless of Wolf's presence. "If you don't mind, um, get out. I need to take a nap before next session."

Wolf laughed, "Its so hard to believe that you can sleep so soundly with a ticking time bomb beneath your bed."

Widow crawls beneath the sheets, curling into the colorless wall. She squeezes her eyes shut before saying, "I think I recall asking you to leave." her tone was tired, but in good humor. It was a testament of how much Widow trusted Wolf to leave her back exposed.

She hears Wolf step towards the door, "Sleep tight."

"Never understood that expression..." Her eyelids grew heavy. The strenuous physical training and constant activity was wearing on her body. She was so _tired._

She hears the door shut, and her eyes fall shut.

* * *

"This friendship is most concerning," says General Rebrenovich. He's surrounded by monitors, in a darkened room. So, so many monitors, in the ventilation systems even, outside the facility, everywhere. It is charming that the girls think that they can just get out of the most heavily secured building in Russia next to the Kremlin without their handlers knowing about it. Many of the supporting psychologists are hesitant to let them have their moments of freedom, but Volkov is the program head directly beneath the General, so they had to differ to him. The effects are most fascinating.

The doctor nods, eyes fixed on the camera monitor from the Black Widow's quarters. "Agreed, but if you think of the potential this gives us for experimentation of her emotional reactions, it could be invaluable."

The General's expression is absolutely unreadable, and only a twitch in his lip reveals to the casual observer that he is not a statue. "Please send me your plans for these experiments. I would like to see the results."

**This chapter was meant to confuse the fuck out of you. So if you are, then mission accomplished.**

**Please review! We're shooting for 70 reviews after this chapter! (PS: I'm planning a special surprise for my 100th reviewer. Muahahaha.)  
**


	15. Ne Plus Ultra

**AN1:** Wow you guys. Just wow. Again, you guys got the quota within a few hours. And then decided to shoot 15 over it. I have amazing readers. I love you all who have reviewed and favorited and followed. It seriously means the world to me.

**AN2:** Sorry about the wait. This chapter was a bull to write, as you're about to see, and it took a lot of finagling to get it right. Also, sports take up a load of time. And then there's that pesky little thing called school (this is an interesting look at my priorities...)

**AN3:** Another shoutout to _PumpkinSpiceLatte, _whose PMs are a giant boost to my writer's ego ;)

**AN4:** This chapter has a playlist if you're looking for the full experience: 1. "Inception"- Micheal Ortega, Youtube micheal ortega 2. "Night of Rain"- Youtube craigsmusicchannel 3. "It's Hard to Say Goodbye"- Micheal Ortega, Youtube micheal ortega ((4. "Cry"- Micheal Ortega, Youtube micheal ortega)) ((5. "My Melancholy"- Vadim Kiselev, Youtube TheOmaXa)) 6."Alone in The Dark"- Vadim Kiselev, Youtube TheOmaXa

((parentheses mean you can skip these songs without ruining the integrity of the playlist.)) There's a link to this playlist on Youtube on my tumblr. I'm thinking of doing one of these, or even just a song, for every chapter if people like it.

**AN5:** Natasha is just under 18 in this chapter.

A large, armed escort is never a good sign. Widow knows, since she can remember having one several times over the years. The Red Room guards somehow all look the same, their faces blended together into one incoherent whole in red Kevlar. Their high-powered rifles are enough of a deterrent that she wouldn't run anywhere. Not that she had a need to, she didn't even know where they were going after all, but the presence of the literal pack of escorts confused her.

They never say a single word, communicating rather with pointed looks and jerks of the head and hands. They lead her through the maze of hallways, on a path Widow had never been before.

They go up and up and up and Widow doesn't know how they could even _fit_ so many stairs into this building when they finally come out into a completely different world. It is the picture of excess- lush, expensive carpet beneath her feet, heavy velvet curtains framing the massive widows, a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, an ornate wooden desk that looked to be worth more than the entire room combined. It looks eerily akin to many of the homes belonging to the marks she'd taken out over the years. The air is full of smoke, and she can easily identify it as the result of an expensive Cuban rolled cigar. The smell never gets off you, she remembers. One of her marks had them stashed all over his house.

Behind the desk is the same man in the Russian army uniform she'd seen yesterday. Judging by the accolades pinned on the lapels and shoulders, he was a four-star general. Widow immediately straightens taller. (_Always show respect for our military. You will work for them one day._) There's the Cuban, hanging out of his mouth like a dead tongue. She can't stand cigars. She remembers a few times wherein the Chief thought it necessary to give her painfully placed burns with one of his cigars. His were different than these ones though. These ones smelled sweeter and weren't followed by the scent of singed skin and flesh. A knot of something that feels vaguely like anticipation and nervousness curls in her throat. "Thank you, guards. Leave us." He has a deep voice, gravelly like a smoker's and strong like a man who has nothing to fear.

Black Widow doesn't move a muscle as the guards leave the room and she just stares down the general. Her feet are shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind her back, her pose militaristic and at-attention. Just because he _has _to have her respect doesn't mean that she has to be intimidated by him. He is a large, broad man beneath the military regalia, with salt-and-pepper hair and dark brown eyes. He contemplated her for a few moments before he finally said, "You, my dear Black Widow, have caused quite a stir among your superiors."

She doesn't know how to respond to that. "Just doing my job, sir." Can't go wrong with politeness, right?

"You are far too modest." Widow wants to snort in laughter (_The Black Widow? Modesty?_), but holds a straight face. "Your exploits have been a great service to your country."

"My pleasure, sir." Not really, because its just what she does. She can't do anything else. She doesn't know exactly what the point of this meeting was, so she may as well stick with the polite route. Always assess the situation before committing to anything. A sudden thought crosses through her mind- maybe this is the end of her training. Wolf had said she'd felt as much... Widow swallows, keeping her expression neutral.

"You are the epitome of what we'd hoped when we began the program," the General says in an indulgently praising tone, "however, there are others who are as good as yourself." _Wolf._ "Many of your peers have shown aptitudes in all the same areas that you have, and we do not tolerate mediocrity. There can only be one who is the _best_."

She doesn't say anything at first, his words pulling and bending, and she feels her insides drop as she starts to realize what he's implying. "What are you asking me to do?" She internally winces at her demanding tone, hopes to make up for it and adds, "Sir."

One. Only one could be the best.

He is facing one of the large windows. "You are a smart girl, Widow. I believe you already know what I'm asking you to do."

She doesn't want to voice it aloud, feigns compliance, "I am not trained to read into situations and look for a deeper meaning. That's not what I'm here for... Sir."

She hears him sigh. _Didn't expect that one, eh, tough guy?_ "So perhaps I shall lay it out in explicit terms?"

"That would be helpful, sir." She grits her teeth and hopes she doesn't sound insubordinate. She's been flogged multiple times for that very infraction.

She feels smug until he turns, and she realizes that he's seen through her thinly-veiled attempt at dodging the realization. "You will have to kill them, Widow. We have chosen you for this task. It is a great honor to be chosen."

The floor is falling out from under her and the ceiling is collapsing and she feels like she _can't breath_ and she's choking on the putrid air because they can't ask her to _kill them_, and she can't _kill Wolf._ She will kill anyone else, _everyone else_ if she needed to... There's not a thing that Widow doesn't believe that she can't do. But killing the one person she considers a friend is something she can't do. She wants to choke, to wretch, to scream, to run from the facility and never come back because she simply _can't do this._

None of her turmoil plays out on her face.

She must follow orders. Follow the goddamned orders. (_Failure is synonymous with torture. Failure is not an option. Never an option. Insubordination is not an option._) Do not question. They know best. She has a talent that cannot be wasted. If she has to kill them, kill _Wolf,_ there has to be a reason. _But I'm not supposed to look for reasons!_ She wants to punch something in frustration. She has to follow orders. Don't question, just do it. Orders. She has to follow...

"I can see you are battling inner demons at the moment, child," he says, and she now wants to punch _him _because no one's called her a child in _years_ and she doesn't want to go back before she was Black Widow and when she was... no. She won't think of that now. He seems to think of a way that this would be explicable to her, says, "There is a great honor that comes from destroying one's enemies. Without enemies, there would be no battle, and without battle, there would be no victory. For every life you take in the name of your country...that is one more victory. One more message to those who seek to ruin us. One more triumph for _peace_. It must be experienced to be understood. And I have this experience. You do not have such pleasure yet, which is why you are obviously struggling with these orders."

Widow stares with wide eyes. Enemies. They're enemies and threats. Justice and peace. That's what she's killing for. She'd just have to recite that as a mantra _justice and peace justice and peace justice and peace_ as she kills. Her throat feels tight again. She doesn't understand why they all have to die. Are they enemies? She tries to clear her mind, pressing her eyes shut in concentration. _Don't question it. They want the best. That's me._

With bile pressing against the back of her mouth, she opens her eyes, manages a strained, "Yes, sir. I understand my orders."

A feral grin crosses the General's face and Widow feels as if her entire existence has collapsed in on itself.

* * *

The room has clearly been crafted specifically for this day.

It's large, about half the size of an American football field. The vaulted ceilings are high, at least four stories, and bright white lights droop off the ceiling like decadent pearls. Plexiglass windows ring the walls on the floor level, and if she looks up, she can see more of the windows circling the room on the highest level. The birds-eye view of the kill box, she realizes distastefully. The floor and walls are white, so white that the light almost reflects off of them like a mirror, and she feels like she's sticking out in the black suit she wears, like an ant under a fucking microscope and she hates the scrutiny, hates what she's here for.

What she's here for.

She hears a door open, feet shuffling, and the door close. She turns, and she feels so disgusting because she's so damn relieved that it isn't Wolf. Create distance. Just a face. Just a mark.

She focuses on the kill strike. Not the look of exhaustion and relief as she pulls herself from the frozen lake, just the blank face of the target she must eliminate.

It's Dark Falcon and she doesn't look ready for a fight, she just looks lost. She spots Widow, comes over with a tenative ease. Familiarity to fight off the unknown. Widow wants to feel sick again.

"A quick snap of the neck will do for this one. If she fights back, you may choose how to end her." His voice is in her ear, on the little communicator that she'd used on an intricate mission once. They usually give her the mission file, the parameters, and turn her loose. She likes the freedom, the illusion of it, anyway. She growls, want to rip the thing out and throw it against a wall. But she can't.

"Widow, what's going on-" her question remains unfinished as her last words are interrupted by Widow's quick hands, wrapping around her neck, a quick jerk to one side.

She feels the rip and tear of her spinal cord beneath her fingers. Hears the crack and snap. Smells Falcon's shock and fear like sulfur. Then her eyes are blank, dark eyes gone even darker if that was possible.

Its over in less than five seconds, the point where Falcon spoke to where's she is now, dead but still warm on the ground.

The orders. That's all this is.

She descends into the razor's edge fog as the body is dragged away by guards. She can feel the observers eyes stabbing into her like accusing, praising knives (_To waste such talent would be criminal._)

Her breathing is short as they send the next one in, and she goes down easier than Falcon. She doesn't speak a single word before Widow is on her and her spine is broken.

It's almost easy now. The routine. (_Taking a life is like target practice._) They send them in, she snaps their necks. The general doesn't speak in her ear anymore. It's just her there, her and the target, her and dead screaming silence after a neck is broken. The faces she knows blending together into a collage of death and dying and pain and fear and nausea.

In her fog, she notices her opponents are gradually becoming more skilled. Like a sick tournament. Take out the weak ones first, and then let the best of them at each other. Nausea and thought fade in the wake of her natural gift. Natural curse.

Her mind sees everything, remembers everything. Every girl is different. Black Jaguar's hands spasmed a bit as she over neural inputs manifesting themselves in death, and Widow knows she's dead before she hits the ground.

White Tiger struggles against her more than the others, busting her lips with a well-placed kick, and she feels warmth dribble down her chin. She wipes it away, but the brief victory of injuring the Widow doesn't last long as a booted foot jabs into her sternum, she hears the blow, can image in visage of a set of crushed lungs and a compacted heart.

Lioness, for all her advantages, puts up a sluggish fight and for the first time in what seems like days the general speaks, "She is weak. Pathetic, really, that when she must fight for her life she cannot even muster the strength to defend herself."

Pathetic, is that what she is? Widow knows exactly what the bloodshot eyes and dark crescents hanging beneath her eyes mean. She had heard that Lioness had been outside almost the entire night.

Widow doesn't snap her neck, and she meant to, because those were the orders, but Lioness recoils hard from Widow's powerful roundhouse kick, and she flies into the wall. Skull meeting concrete is a sound Widow never wants to hear again.

She's down and doesn't get up. God, the sound of the body hitting the floor. Like a fucking sack of potatoes, except it's the body of someone she knows and she feels bile at the back of her throat because she sees the blood pooling, standing against the clinical white.

The color of being scrubbed clean, white. White tainted by the blood of the girl she just killed, and can almost see it staining her hands. She doesn't want to see red anymore.

But there's more and more red. Each one that hits the floor, red, red, _red._ So much red.

She's drowning in the red, almost doesn't notice that they have not sent in another target. "Am I finished?" She sounds so clinical, her voice as steady as it was when she needed to play confidant seductress.

"No." He is pleased with her apparent lack of emotion. If only he knew... "We have one final test for you."

Doors open, and Widow feels like she's about to collapse, bury herself under the red and just die there because _she can't kill her._

Red Wolf.

"Your final test of loyalty commences. Proceed however you see fit." She finally breaks her orders and rips the General out of her ear, crushing the insignificant communicator in her palm as if it were foam.

Test of loyalty. Who was she loyal to? Her country, or her friend? (_We must never disappoint our country._)

Wolf, "I know what they're asking us to do." They're separated by at least a dozen feet, but it feels like barely a hairsbreadth. "They asked me to kill you. I'm sure they asked you to do the same."

Widow doesn't say anything. Just watches, jade eyes staring down Wolf like a laser. They're both frozen in the ice of letting the other make the first move.

As always, Wolf is the one who breaks the ice. She moves forward, obviously in attack position, and Widow doesn't want to hurt her but _she's giving her no choice_ so she brings her knee up beneath Wolf's chin and Wolf doesn't respond at all like Widow thought she would and falls to the ground. She doesn't stay down, though, and rolls and renews her attack, and roundhouse kick that's so slow it's less than effortless to block it and she doesn't know why Wolf is being such a terrible fighter.

"What the hell are you doing?" Widow shouts, incensed. She's stuck in an imbroglio, and Wolf is only hastening the most unfavorable outcome if she keeps doing this. She can't just stand and wait for the inevitable. She is of action, not patience.

Instead of charging wildly again, Wolf stops. Smiles sadly at her friend, "Only one of us is going to come out of this. I know you, and you won't kill me unless provoked."

Widow doesn't have time to fully absorb the words before Red Wolf begins anew with a barrage of right and left hooks.

The physical is simple. Block. Absorb. Counter. Step back. Can't go in for the kill. Not yet.

She hesitates, Wolf is stumbling, but she doesn't kill. Can't. Her body moves automatically, ready to drive the heel of her palm into Wolf's sternum to collapse her ribcage, but she stops, almost stumbling herself to stop her own momentum. She wants to scream, to yell at Wolf, but her throat feels as if it is clogged by air.

Wolf recovers after an inordinately long time. Widow sees anger in Wolf's eyes. Angry the Widow hasn't gone for the kill as she always did when she got an advantage. "Fight me!" Widow still looks akin to a gasping trout, so Wolf continues, "One of us is leaving this room! One! It's going to be you and _everyone knows it!_" The last words are screamed, and Wolf raises her arms to the heavens, indicating the silent observers who are now shuffling uncomfortably from their window perches at being pointed out. "You're going to kill me and you're going to survive." Her eyes are like iron as she says, "I'll be damned if I don't do this one good thing." Now, quieter, as if she had not intended for Widow to hear, "Let me do this _one good thing._"

Widow listens, absorbs, completely still.

Wolf comes at her again, much more precise than she was before. Familiar territory that Widow can almost lose herself in if she doesn't think about the reality she faces. Can almost lose herself in the illusion that she doesn't have to kill her.

But the fantasy doesn't last long. Real blows, real pain. They step effortlessly back into their eerie dance, combinations of poise and grace mixed with violence; like partners who had practiced the dance over and over, they knew each other, knew their strategy, knew each other more intimately than lovers in the art of the fight.

What she thinks back on, many years after, is how it was an accident. A goddamned accident.

They're in the throes of an intense spar, Widow skipping over obvious openings to shift the fight's outcome in her favor. She doesn't know why. The end is unavoidable. Some part of her must think that there might be a favorable outcome for the both of them. She should know not to think such things anymore.

She doesn't realize how much force she's put behind her punch until she hears the crunch of broken ribs and the strangled breath of a punctured lung is pulled from Wolf's body. She falls, and it's no act this time.

There's no silence afterwards. Only broken, ragged breathing, and Widow's panicked gasp.

And now Widow feels like she's swallowed her tongue because she just messed up. Badly. Horribly. Incorrigibly. The existence that collapsed on her is suffocating her. She feels like she can't breath. Within two seconds she's on the floor next to Wolf, hands fluttering uselessly over her. She knows there's nothing she can do now, she just can't admit it. Not strong enough to admit it.

Wolf's eyes are wide, (_she obviously hadn't expected the blow to be so damaging_) but there's acceptance in them. She knows where she is headed. Knows her fate. There's no hand reaching out of the water, clinging to life in a desperate grasp for something _human,_ something that_ feels_, something that's not afraid to do so. No, in Wolf's eyes there is no despair. Acceptance, maybe a hint of fear and anxiety intermingled, but there is knowing in her eyes and Widow wants to lay down and die next to her. Wolf is coughing blood now, and Widow watches as it drips to the floor, almost black against the white.

"Wolf, you're not going to die." It sounds like a command. As if she has some semblance of control right now.

Wolf's laugh is but a cough, and there more red. More and more red. "You are... an excellent liar... But even I know... to not question... the inevitable."

"Stop talking."

"Make me."

Their old banter. It feels like a knife is twisting in her gut over something that used to bring such joy.

Another pained cough. More blood.

There's red on her hands now, Wolf's blood staining her skin like indelible ink. "End it," the dying girl rasps, a plea to the one person she trusts in this world.

"What?" The words scare her. She's already got Wolf's life on her shoulders, and she doesn't want to be the one to _truly_ end it. It would be the blood loss, not her fucking mistake that ends Wolf's life. Not Widow.

"Snap my neck... it's that or... bleed out... painfully... for hours."

She had her on rock solid logic. Logic she couldn't deny or refute. Painful, twisted, sickeningly truthful mercy. _Justice and peace justice and peace justice and peace._

She places hands hands on Wolf's neck, feels for the gap between the vertebrae, the bile rises when she realizes she's treating her best friend like a mark, like a target, like an object, stops when she hears the next words out of Wolf's mouth, "Alisa... Katayev."

"What?" A true wordsmith she is not with her friend dying slowly in front of her. The confusion is born of misunderstanding.

"My name... I never... forgot..." The rest of her words, if there are any, are swallowed by an eruption of coughing and blood.

It seems like so much blood, but in reality she knows its not, knows it will take hours- agonizing, horrendous, slowly bleeding from the inside out. She could be saved. Wolf could be saved if anyone in the Red Room gave two fucks what came of her. But Widow knows they don't, knows that they will let her bleed out slowly, _slowly_ because they only want her. They all want the Widow. Suddenly, taking a life isn't like target practice at all.

She realizes in that moment that Wol- no, _Alisa_ was the only one who had ever wanted... _Natalya._ Sharp pain in her head as she remembers the name, feels like a needle is going from her frontal lobe to her cerebellum, but she doesn't react, needs to stay with Wolf now. Names are too much. Her head hurts, and names are just making it worse.

Her eyes flutter, and Widow knows she's probably passing out from the pain. At least it will be easier this way. She'll already look dead when Widow ends Wolf for good. Just as the light is fading from her vision, the Red Wolf manages to spit out her last words with copious amounts of blood, "I love you." Said on the cusp of a dying, rasping breath.

"Love is for children," whispers the Widow brokenly. She caused it. All of it. She's the reason Wolf is here on the floor, dying in horrible shivers and painful gasps of breath and blood. The closer she gets, the farther away Wolf seems.

If this is what love comes to, in death and blood, Widow wants no part of it. Not a single shred. There's no real way that this stupid emotion could be at all useful to her. If anything, it is a distraction. Why are there tears in her eyes? Why can she barely breath? Why is the knife spearing upwards into her chest now? No. She is the Black Widow. She does not cry. She does not show emotion. Love _is _for children because it is stupid and naive and horrible and gut-wrenching.

Only leads to pain.

And the Black Widow cannot know pain.

Whoever said 'Better to have loved and lost than to have never known love at all' had obviously not had their best friend die in front of them. Dying.

The moment passes like any other. Like the hundreds who had already died at the Widow's deadly grasp, it is similar on the outside looking in. Snap, and dead. Stillness like no other.

But inside the moment, it is the worst feeling in the world, though she ignores it. Her tears are dry. Gone someplace where they are useful. Not here.

Her hands stretching around Wolf's neck (_when did she become so thin?_), powerful fingers grasping, finding the best grip. _Justice and peace._

___We have no use of a child who cannot follow orders._

One jerk, feels the cord rip, feels the resistance, doesn't take no for an answer, applies more pressure. The final snap. Higher pitched than the rest. Pouring salt into the wounds, Wolf's eyes jerk open the moment before she leaves the world.

_She shoots Blue Eyes a look that clearly states 'When I get the chance, I'm coming for you.' Blue Eyes seems to understand, but looks undeterred. She doesn't like that._

They're wide, dead, a splash of blue against the white and the red. But they don't look the same anymore. No one can truly understand what it feels like to watch the spark of life disappear from eyes until experience beats the naivety out of you. It drains like water from a porcelain tub, curving downwards into the theoretical abyss no one really knows exists.

The moment has passed, and the Black Widow rises from her fog, feels the red on her soul like never before. (_Can I even have a soul?_) The white is no longer just white.

* * *

She awakens, and pure shock jolts unbidden through her as she realizes she _has no idea where she is._ Suddenly, the blankets on top of her are suffocating, and kicks out of them with a rushed breath, and rolls ungracefully out of the bed. She skitters to the wall, in a defensive position as she places her palms against the tacky wallpaper. (_she's never woken up to a room that she doesn't know._)

It has the look of a motel room, with red and yellow striped wall paper, and a cheap-looking yellow bedspread. The carpet is faded red, and the other furniture, namely a beaten table with a sad, red lamp. The entire room just looks unfortunate, and she has no desire to go anywhere near that bed ever again.

The only thing that looks clean is a pristine manila folder sitting beneath the moth-eaten lampshade.

One that Widow recognizes as a mission folder.

Out of pure habit, she picks it up, opens it. She sees a mission summary, a simple assassination begins to read and then- a pained gasp tears from her throat, the file falls from her hands, and she follows it to the ground as her knees buckle.

She killed her best friend.

Tossed her aside like a piece of trash.

And it's making her sick.

Blue eyes, mesmerizing, beautiful. Blue eyes, dead, dark. Is she destined to destroy everything she touches? The poison tendrils worm through her, and a gasping pain grinds in her stomach, and she doesn't stop the vomit as it spills onto the carpet.

_What have I done?_

She wants to tear her skin from her flesh, claw her eyes from their sockets because _nothing _compares to the disgust she feels inside her own skin. (_Can I even have a soul?_)

Her head hurts, spins uncontrollably, throbs as if it will break off and fall to the floor. She feels as if her windpipe is closing, drags air in greedily and panicked, her knuckles clenched on the floor. It feels like there is a tempest in her mind, a storm of chaos and hurt and love and _not love_ and violence.

Control yourself, Widow.

Control. She tries to lock down her emotions, like chaining a massive dragon unfurling its wings in her brain, can almost feel it splitting the two hemispheres of her brain apart.

She can only imagine that this is what insanity must feel like.

An absolute lack on control. Caused by love. She wants to throw the emotion aside like she threw aside so many bodies.

Once upon a time, she was Natalya Romanova. Natalya was never strong enough.

The girl that Wolf had called Widow was an emotional wreck. Imperfect, emotional, disgusting.

The Black Widow would be perfect. Exactly what her country wanted- a harbinger of death and destruction. Her only emotion cold clarity. A creature to bring fear and nothing else.

Anything would be better than what she feels now.

There never was any other choice, and she realizes that now.

Just as she left behind the shackles of Natalya, she leaves behind the shackles of simply being Widow.

And so, the Black Widow picks up the mission file and begins to read.

_Can I even have a soul?_ No. No she can't.

**This chapter was, by far, the toughest to write. That should be pretty obvious with the content. ****I am now gunning for 95 reviews. To date, this has been my most reviewed story ever, so thank you all for that.**  


**Quick shoutout: _Sinkme_, you totally called it.  
**

**I've decided to change things up a bit, and it will not be the 100th reviewer who gets this prize, but I will draw names out of a hat (and yes, I will seriously draw them out of a hat) of all the reviewers of chapter 16, and this reviewer will get... an advance screening of the first chapter of the White sequel,_ Perfection of Duality._**

**boom. I just heard some minds being blown :)**


	16. São Paulo: Part 1 of 2

**AN1:** Wow. You guys are the definition of amazing. Blew past a hundred reviews without breaking a sweat. Thank you all eternally for your support. You guys made this story happen.

**AN2:** Remember friends, this chapter is my big 'giveaway' chapter. Every review from a registered user will be put into a hat, and I will draw a name to see who gets the preview chapter for _Perfection of Duality. _I promise that it will seriously be a hat. It's the best way to randomly select something :)

**AN3:** I rarely write in other languages since I only know English and Spanish, and those online translators are tricky, so I prefer to write in English and then say later what language they speak. Much of this chapter dialogue is said in Portuguese._  
_

**AN4:** Natasha's about 18 years old.

playlist for this chapter: _The Resistance_ as covered by 2cellos (originally performed by Muse), _Romance_ by Apocalyptica

_****__São_ _Paulo: Part 1 of 2_

_São_ _Paulo, Brazil_

_Private Residence of Gregor Valdre_

_65th floor, Valdre's private suite_

_0037 hours_

"You look beautiful in the moonlight, my love," says Gregor Valdre, CEO of Valdre Incorporated. He watches intently the gentle sway of the redhead's backside as she walks towards the widow of the apartment bedroom. The moon reflects off her porcelain skin, making her glow like the angel he could swear she is.

Her jade eyes are playful as a smile graces her young face as she turns, tucking a lock of her long hair behind her ear and saying brazenly and bashfully all at once and Gregor falls in love with her a little bit more, "I bet you say that to all the girls." God, you wouldn't be able to tell that Portuguese is not her first language the way she speaks it, each syllable rolling effortlessly off her tongue.

"Just one," he assures easily, just as easily as he hid his wedding ring in the nightstand table drawer. To be fair, he and Jacqueline have been growing apart for some time. They rarely sleep in the same bed anymore, let alone with each other. He is hurting no one by being engaged in his current love affair with the beautiful Maria Jacob. Only in the city for a few weeks on holiday from school in the United States, Maria had met him in a bar when she had bought him a drink, and he met the most fiery, outgoing personality he had ever come across. Things had blossomed from there, Maria being the main instigator, and they had tumbled into bed that very night.

Things haven't cooled down since, despite their very wide age gap. (Maria had informed him her 22 years versus his 49 did not bother her. And as far as he is concerned, if she isn't bothered, then he isn't bothered.)

"Come back to bed, Maria. I am not finished with you yet." She stands by the window sill, letting the warm breeze blow across her skin. She looks as if she is made of porcelain from the very hands of the angels. She turns with a look of pure, clean, unadulterated innocence on her face.

Soon, though, she is anything but innocent as she takes on the image of a vixen, and a carnal grin creeps across her face. She tosses her red hair, and like a creeping tigress, prowls back to the bed where he awaits her. "Why, Gregor? Haven't I ravished you enough?"

"Hardly," he answers eagerly. He doesn't think he can ever get enough of that tight, sensuous body. It is perfect, except for these masses of scar tissue she refuses to speak of. He leaves it at that, assuming there was an abusive family member. She pretends they are not there, and so does he.

Any thoughts are well and truly erased by her seductive, husky murmur, "Well then, we'll have to rectify this problem, won't we?" She crawls atop him, and unbeknownst to her subject, begins her most effective interrogation method once more.

She hasn't asked for what she needs yet. The final code for the vault access. Every other password has been garnered from the computer system, but the _final code_ is only in his brain. And she will get it like water from a sponge. She has him now, hook, line, and sinker. Her barbs are planted, now all she has to do is give a little tug and he will give her the numbers. She has been waiting for the moment when her slow and careful seduction would grant her access to even his most closely guarded secrets. It is an art form, one she had learned through innocence and has perfected through experience.

They're in the throes of pleasure (_at least one of them is, anyway_) and the girl named Maria leans down, teeth next to his ear, and says, "Tell me the access code to the vault, love." The moment she has built up to so carefully. There will be some confusion, but he will relent. This she knows.

Confusion clouds his arousal momentarily. "What? Why?" Why would Maria want the numbers to the vault unless she plans on... His thought processes are useless under the wicked movements of her hips. She moves in a circular pattern, and her hands run through his graying hair.

This Maria, the one playful and loving, says, "It's a surprise, and if you don't tell me ... " she halts her movements on top of him, and she hears a whine in his throat. When you deny them what they want most, reason and logic become an afterthought.

She begins to lift off of him, and he swallows audibly. "Don't be that way, love."

"Then just tell me the numbers. Just a couple little numbers and then _I'll let you come inside me_," she says those last words as a bribe, knowing that men love it when she lets them release inside of her. She doesn't know why, and doesn't think she ever will, but it works as she sees his face transform from confusion to pure, unadulterated lust. And with a small swivel of her hips, she sinks back down, and just a _little bit_ of pressure... the digits come out in a rush, there are eleven of them, but she catches each one and remembers them effortlessly. She doesn't have to try very hard.

"Now make me come, Maria," he commands with an agonized look. The only thing on his mind is how tight and torturous she is, and if could just find his release inside of her...

And he has no idea that she has no intention of doing so. Now it's his turn to watch her face transform, from smiles and lust and moaning to a blank look as dark and terrifying as anything he'd ever seen. In these moments, Gregor wonders what kind of creature he has taken to his bed. Given his most intimate secrets to. What kind of creature he is at the mercy of. "Thank you for your cooperation," she spits in Russian, and sees a look of confusion and maybe a hint of uncertain fear before she draws a knife from beneath the mattress and drags it deeply across the skin of Gregor's throat.

The blood and trachea spill from his neck like it has exploded from the inside out as the Black Widow extricates herself from his corpse, and gathers her clothing. She finishes sliding into Maria's shorts and tank top when she hears a quiet knock on the door. She curses under her breath in Russian as she begins procuring all the weapons she had placed around the room. Two handheld guns with silencers. Three knives, including the one still red with Valdre's blood. Two sharp hairpins, and since she did not have time to put them in her hair, shoved them into her bra. She hadn't brought anything else. Her rhinestone flip flops are not exactly functional, so she leaves them behind. A fast getaway is crucial. Especially if there is someone on the other side of the door. It does not matter who. They cannot remember her as the woman who left Gregor's room before his body was discovered. (_You can never leave a single witness._)

She is headed for the door, running a hand through her mussed hair, and casts a noncommittal glance at the dead body on the bed. What would be an uncomfortable, downright horrific look for someone grounded in normalcy, at a nude man with his throat slit, does not illicit a reaction from the Black Widow. She feels nothing, only remembers the numbers. She knows where the vault is, knows what files she must steal, knows exactly how to get out, exactly when the shifts of guards change so that she can slide through and out like a ghost. Her hand is on the doorknob.

She nearly leaps out of her own skin out of surprise when she hears the guards this time yelling through the door in Portuguese, "Mr. Valdre? Is everything okay in there?" The timid knock before she had recognized as the weak, tentative knock from the maid. And now, there's the guards, pounding on the door and shouting for Mr. Valdre. Security is supposed to be off for the night! As they always were when Valdre's various mistresses came over. Seems to be a common thread in her targets. All personnel vacate the premises when your boss is having sex. She decides then and there that she is going to murder whoever in Intel gave her the shitty information.

She very well can't answer them as they continue to pound. Looks like this will have to be a fight-her-way-out situation. That complicates things. She had already planted a virus to completely corrupt and destroy the video footage, so that was not a problem. All she has left now is to dispose of the live witnesses without taking too much time. Padding quietly across the carpet, she looks through the peephole.

As far as she can tell, there are five security personnel. Only one has a gun, and the rest have tasers. Laughably easy, but she will have to dispatch them quickly if she wants to remain on schedule. (_31 minutes until shift change_) She realizes distantly that Intel gave her shift change times at well. She'd never had a chance to observe them directly. The guards generally left Valdre alone, and Maria was always hanging off his arm, so she almost never saw the guards. She could only guess wildly at their scheduling. She recognizes all the classical signs of a mission being shot to hell, but she has gotten out of worse scrapes before.

She flies out the door, effectively knocking two of the more exuberant guards on their asses with the force of her crashing through the door. She snaps one neck (_the one with the gun, he was the biggest threat_) before they can even react to her presence and he falls to the floor. She doesn't take the gun. Too much noise and no time for the silencer.

Her mind assesses the situation, plans her attack before the guards can move two feet. The two standing come at her together (_amateurs_) and she smashes their heads together, knows they'll be unconscious (_but that's not enough_) for at least a little while. She can sense the two behind her whom she knocked down. They don't know those pathetic little tasers won't affect her. Not a high enough voltage. Something with her physiology and hell if she knows. It's probably related to the ability that allows her to know exactly where they are, how far behind her they are, can _hear their breathing _when she easily executes a single back handspring, landing one of their heads squarely between her thighs. She breaks his neck without even trying. She was trained to kill with those thighs, after all. Barely a fraction of a second has passed, and she swings her momentum to her left, using the still-standing dead guard as a fulcrum where the other guard is gaping like a fish without water at her display. She slings her elbows around his neck, like she's going to give him a massive bear hug, and releases the now-limp man from the deadly grip of her thighs. Without letting go of the other guard's neck, she takes two running steps along the ground in front of him, launches into the air and flies around his back with the tact and precision of an aerial gymnast. With the force of a sledgehammer, she plants a knee into the middle of his spine, right between his shoulder blades. There's a single loud crack (_severed spinal cord_) followed by multiple, smaller cracks (_collapsing rib cage_) and the man's final gasp as air is forced from his lungs for the last time.

He drops forward and she follows, knowing her weight falling on a collapsed thoracic cavity will seal the deal. He hits the floor, she feels the unnatural give in his back and chest and knows that his heart and lungs have been mutilated beyond repair. She doesn't even pause for a moment to check to see if they are dead. She's good enough that she just knows. She stands, plunges a knife into the base of the skulls of the previously unconscious security guards. Their deaths are positively noiseless. Not even a subconscious movement.

She takes a taser (_might come in handy if she runs out of bullets_) and the gun and searches for a radio, a communicator, some device that links security personnel. She finds it, a little earpiece that she takes and places in her own ear. There's just the regular chatter, talk about the perimeter being secured for the night, and how Valasquez should come to Debrief Room 2 for a summary on Valdre's overnight security, and where are Abilhão, Torres, Lourenço, Forneas, and Salinas? They haven't checked in from the possible threat on level 65.

There's the ticket. She's got to move. (_28 minutes until shift change_)

She takes off for the service elevator, capping the silencers on her own guns as she goes. No cameras, little traffic, goes directly to the basement floor. And the security personnel never take it. They prefer Valdre's personal elevator, which is the closest to his personal rooms.

She hits the button, not worrying about fingerprints. Everyone knows that there is a Black Widow. She doesn't care if they have her fingerprints, her DNA. She knows that no one will ever catch her.

The elevator pings, and she steps inside, hitting the button for the basement floor. The service elevator is quick, and then she's flying through the halls like a phantom. She manages to still listen to the radio- they've found Valdre. Who was on his personal detail? No one, he requested to be left alone! And you listened? Stupid! Lock down this building now!

Cute, but their pathetic lockdown will never hold her.

Doors with the highest security rating are no match for her, as she effortlessly fakes her way through pass code locks, fingerprint checks, and ocular scanners (_those ones are always dicey_). She needs no special equipment to do so- her computer virus was a brilliant invention, making it so her fingerprints and retina pattern would open literally any door in the place. Even in lockdown. She feels ashamed, but not much, at the flash of pride that goes through her. She wrote that virus herself.

She comes across some security guards, but with her silenced guns in each hand she puts them down without much effort. She only knows how many she has killed because she knows how many bullets she has put in them. She has replaced her clips of twelve bullets twice on each gun.

The inner sanctum of the vault is why she needed to seduce Valdre. She has arrived.

It is a massive door, and it looks like its made of only stainless steel, but she's done her homework. It's a shell of steel, and within is packed with osmium, one of the densest metals found on the planet. The thing is massive, and has a weight to match. Hell, a square foot of the stuff weighs three fourths of a ton. A massive padlock adorns the face. There are seven guards around it, she picks off four before they even register her presence. She takes down two more as they run at her, and she can almost laugh again because none of them have gone for a gun.

The last guard isn't as stupid, and takes cover behind the security desk, gun in hand. She is more worried about the sound than anything. She is surprised when the guard scratches together enough courage to poke his head above his desk. She doesn't waste an opportunity and then the top of his skull litters the ground.

(_15 minutes until shift change_)

She spins the numbers. No mistakes. She hears the air release, and steps back. The computer will open the door. She may be strong, but she hasn't got a prayer of pulling open this thing. It groans open, and she darts inside.

The vault is a treasure trove of wealth. It's Valdre's personal vault, so there's a lot of valuable shit it in there. Piles of corporate stocks, stacks of cash bound by paper bindings in sets of five grand on wire shelving; there are even piles of _gold bars_ behind glass doors. But none of those things are of any use to her.

All she knows is that she has so steal very specific documentation. Expenditures, proprietary ownership exchanges, and all that. The official corporate documents are in here. The ones available to the public are apparently doctored. Not that she is supposed to be looking for reasons why she was on a mission. She isn't. Of course not.

The files are in a nondescript file cabinet. Metal, gray, dull. She needs the files from 1993 to present. She takes the files she needs, _they_ need, an armful of information (_A handful of facts can be more dangerous than an army of tanks_) and blasts out of there because there is only 5 minutes left until the shift change. She stowed a backpack away in a nearby hallways because she has no intention of carrying this massive stack of papers out in her arms. She quickly and easily finds it and stuffs the folders inside.

Black Widow makes her way back through the complex maze of hallways that make up the underbelly of the high rise in downtown São Paulo. She heads for the tunnels that will eventually lead her to a manhole cover a few blocks away from the building. She just needs to slip through security to get to the entry.

Some of the older buildings in São Paulo have old fashioned storm runoff channels in the basements that lead directly to the city's sewers. These vertical channels were built to drain a building quickly if storm surge flooded the lower levels. This building has one, the opening ten feet by seven feet, with a rusting ladder and the echoes of rat squeals coming from below. She sees a security guard. He yells, she swears and runs for the tunnel.

She drops to the ladder, bits of red oxidized iron flaking off onto her hands. She rapdily steps down the two story drop, and on the fifth rung, felt a give and before she could yank her weight back up, the unstable rung gave way. Should have gone slower.

Not a crisis, not until the rung her hands hold snaps like a toothpick as well. She knows how to break her fall, but she lands on a horribly uneven surface, slanted towards the center to funnel waste water, and her foot twists beneath her. A surprised grunted slips through her teeth. She doesn't so much feel pain. Only that something is off.

It's not broken, clearly. No matter how good she is, she can't ignore a broken bone. But it feels twisted, as if two ligaments are crossed over each other when they shouldn't be. When she rotates it slowly, she can feel tiny bits of pain from her nerves, but its incredibly easy to ignore. She is chastising herself severely as she stands and begins her getaway, albeit slower than she would have liked. And she hears the security guard in pursuit. Her body is limping automatically, but she tries not to. Putrid water soaks her still-bare feet, she feels something she doesn't want to know the identity of squishing between her toes. Rats scamper alongside her as she makes her way quickly through the tunnels, their tiny claws scratching away at the grime-encrusted tunnel floor. She loses the guard in the labyrinth, but she doesn't slow. Her mental focus goes towards keeping a quick pace, as she silently counts the distance, lips moving as she calculates she has about a half a block to go. It's only a matter of time before Valdre's entire security force is upon her. Stupid Intel.

The next events are hard to recall completely, but what she does remember is loud voices, the radio crackling, We have her cornered in the sewer on the west side of the building! All personnel to the west side sewers! She remembers hearing footsteps, too many people for her to take down but dammit, she is going to try. They are coming from both sides, so there would be no evasive action.

She thinks, _knows_, she shot some of them, a lot of them. She ran out of bullets, used the stolen gun and taser, but there is just too many to handle. She feels tranq darts, but when they don't do a thing, they resort to barbaric methods. She can almost feel their shock when she does not go down no matter how many darts pierce her skin. She rips them out, drawing small springs of blood.

There's just too many of them and only one of her. She hears at least four coming up behind her, sees about eight in front of her, feel the vibrations of the footsteps of dozens more racing towards her along the grimly ground. She thinks she killed most of the initial group, but she can't be certain.

They hit her over the head with something. That much is clear when she comes to, and she is hit with so much surprise when she finds herself in a small gray room and not a dark sewer line. Her head feels like it is floating. The lights are harsh, and she has to blink against their ferocity until her eyes adjust. It is concrete with no windows. The ground slopes to a drain in the floor. A security camera is situated on the ceiling in a corner of the room. There is a singular door, steel maybe, with no knob. The air is putrid, smelling like sweat and dust and mold.

She has never been captured before. Come close, certainly. Botswana jumps to mind. (_An op gone so horribly south that she had to abandon her favorite sniper rifle and even then barely got out alive, plus a broken humorous, separated shoulder, two bullet grazes, one bullet wound, one knife puncture_) But never captured, hands and feet bound, dirty, cloth gag jammed between her teeth, lying uncomfortably on the floor. She is chilled and that confuses her until she realizes that she has no clothes on.

Nudity doesn't scare her. Vulnerability isn't something that scares her. She recognizes a dull throbbing coming from deep within her, a rawness between her thighs. She knows what it means. Doesn't really phase her, she's just surprised by it. It is a sensation she feels often enough, but her head is still foggy and _what the hell did they hit me with?_

She clears a bit of phlegm from her throat and rolls onto her back. Her head is clearing, and she clearly feels a rather large lump on the base of her skull, right where it meets her neck. _Got the sweet spot, did you? Bastards._

She still feels unnaturally drowsy, but she begins to take stock of her situation. She is in the process of seeing if she could use something to jimmy the lock on her cuffs when the door bursts open. She doesn't try to escape. Not yet, because that would just be impractical.

He doesn't say anything, but she immediately moves herself away from him. Pure human instinct, but she is just playing. Toying. Her bare skin scrapes along the floor like a grater until she is sitting and her back is against the wall. She will put on Maria again. Be terrified and young and confused.

The only remarkable feature he possesses is a jagged scar on his cheek. As a whole, he just looks breath-takingly average. He roughly yanks the gag from her moth, and it falls around her neck like a collar.

Despite his entirely unintimitdating appearance, Widow knows she has to get out of here. Soon. This is what she was trained for.

"Please!" She cries suddenly, purposely raising her voice multiple octaves, "Please don't hurt me!" Widow says this in English. Language barriers make captors uncomfortable. "No Portuguese!" Widow cries, easily falling into the role of terrified captive. Wild eyes and shallow breathing become her focus. She tries to make her eyes water a bit. Makes her body tremble.

The man steps towards her, getting into her face, unaffected by her act, and says in his native tongue, "We know who you are, _Black Widow_," he says, pausing slightly before the revelation of her name. "The question I have for you is this: who do you work for?" So this is what they are after. No one knows who the Widow works for.

She knows her chances are now officially fucked, but doggedly stays the course, "What are you saying?" She leans away from the man, shouting shrilly out the door, "Someone help me!"

He grabs her jaw and wrenches her eyes back to his. She notes that they are dark brown, angry. "Drop the act. If you refuse to cooperate, we have methods of persuading you."

She hates to comply, but the scared woman act is not going to get her out of this. Wild eyes become like glass, cutting and razored. Face deadens to terrifying nonchalance. Body tense with fright slackens to out of place tranquility. She knows how to play this game.

No words will cross her lips. No taunts, no dares to bring on the pain. Just closed lips and uncooperative mind. She hasn't screamed from torture for a long time. He will have to work for it.

The scarred man stands. Says tacitly, "I have no reservations about harming women."

(_There is a reservation for that?_) She remembers the first man in her bed, with a trainer in the corner, _I'm really sorry... My mother taught me better than this... _She knows that reservations are for the weak minded.

He stands, and she braces herself for whatever is to come. Not exactly a brace, but she knows how to direct her pain.

Instead of a blow, a strike, a burn, a whip, he leaves.

Bt she is not alone for long.

Another man, this one exceptional in that his gut droops over his belt, has multiple chins, and rotting teeth. "They told me you were pretty," he says, voice a nasally hiss. He steps towards her, and she doesn't move. She can practically read his thoughts by the look on his face.

If they think that this is going to break her, then they really have no idea who they are dealing with.

He is crouching down by her, and pulls her legs so that she slides away from the wall and towards him. "But they did not tell me how pretty," he leers, eyes brazenly sweeping her body. His fingers paw at her, her breasts, her stomach, down to her center. She remains limp and unresponsive. She knows this grinds on most men. They hate it when a woman isn't aroused by them. She knows it irks her current captor, her nonchalance, as his face twists from lust to annoyance.

"Not an issue. I'll take them how I get them. It's not the first time I've taken a woman dry." He takes a ring of keys from his belt. She notes it without moving. He moves down her body to unlock her feet shackles. Biggest mistake of his pathetic life. Now that she knows he has the keys, he is no longer useful.

Even with her hands and feet bound, she is deadly. She uses one knee to ram upwards into his throat, and she feels his body shudder deeply in response. This makes him buck upwards, now on his knees. She disentangles her legs from him, and despite the chains and locks binding her ankles, lifts nearly her entire torso off the floor, nearly all her weight resting on her shoulder blades, and his head and neck are between her thighs. It is child's play now.

A small jerk is all it takes, and he falls with half drooping eyes and mouth agape.

She rolls away from him, and snags the keys from his hand With her own, still behind her back. She unlocks her hands quickly, despite the fact that she was unable to see them. She undoes her feet, and stands, pacing quickly towards the door.

They will try to subdue her soon. She would welcome that.

She knows that there is no fast way out unless someone opens it from the outside. She wants to catch them unprepared.

Initially, her plan works like a charm. The door opens the barest amount, and she exploits the crack as if it were a gorge. She doesn't care if she kills them, she just needs to get out. The next room outside hers is filled with dozens of men. With guns. Shit. And then the plan is pretty much shot when she counts them.

She has to hope against hope they won't kill her, hopefully they need her too much to do that. She is a whirlwind of knocked out men and speed and power until she hears a shot.

It feels as if her right knee was swept right out from under her. She ignores it until she tries to make a dash at the shooter, and falls to the ground when she puts weight on her right knee. She almost doesn't notice she is shot until she feels the burn, slowly turning into a fiery agony, looks down and sees her knee bleeding profusely, the scarlet flowing generously onto the floor. She can see the white of her kneecap, the darker shade of her muscle, shrouded by blood.

The preadtors descend, and their prey fights back as much as she can. There are too many hands reaching for her. She thinks she kills a good number of them. There are unmoving bodies on the floor. She is satisfied, hopes that she has put the fear in them. Some are hesitant, reach and pull back, again and again whenever she lashes.

Until one isn't. It is the man with the scar, and he stands over her with a gun pointed right at her chest. She doesn't stop her struggle. (_Do not yield until death. Death is preferable to giving away information. You must be strong in the face of death. For it is not something to fear, but a measure of protection._)

He sees that a gun does not stop her. She kills another one of his men. He aims the muzzle towards her right shoulder, pulls the trigger, then the left, and pulls the trigger. It is almost a delayed reaction from when the wounds start to pour blood across her arms and when she finally realizes what has happened. It is strange for him, but he is mightily impressed. The Black Widow isn't to be trifled with. Shot three times and she is barely yielding.

Does she fear nothing?

**End of São Paulo: Part I**


	17. São Paulo: Part 2 of 2

**AN1: **Thank you all for the continuous support! And congratulations to **PirateKnightoftheRings** for winning in the drawing for the advance chapter of _Perfection of Duality_.

**AN2: **This chapter is the continuation of last chapter. My apologies for the wait. This chapter was one of the most intensive writing processes I've ever gone through. Seriously, this chapter was a fine slice of hell and I even thought of breaking it up into three parts, but decided against it. I hope you like the result! You'll see quite a few flashback lines to previous chapters.

**AN3:** Special thanks to _PumpkinSpiceLatte_, without whom this chapter would not be finished.

**AN4: **Natasha is about 18 years old. (Same as previous chapter)

playlist for this chapter: _The Shadow of Venus_ by Apocalyptica, _Sacra_ by Apocalyptica

***Warning: Mature material ahead. Heavy themes of rape, abuse, and torture. Some graphic elements. Read at your own risk.**

_**São Paulo: Part 2 of 2**_

The smell of rotting flesh is overwhelming. It is one thing to know exactly how a body goes through decomposition and another thing entirely to watch it happen.

The first stages aren't so bad. They haven't cuffed her again. She would like to laugh at them, when they toss her back into the room with the body of the man she had killed. Knows that nothing has the capability of breaking her. Much less something that is such a rational turn of events.

Livor mortis, rigor mortis, algor mortis. They pass uneventfully, and she almost wishes they would come and interrogate her. The fat, dead man has nothing of use on him. He still smells vaguely like alcohol, beneath the scent of urine and feces. She hasn't relieved herself since she was Maria, so the scent is coming from him. Bowels release upon death.

No one accompanies her back into the room. It is pristine, the room and she does not expend any of her energy investigating. She won't be finding a way out unless it is through that door.

She wants to move, to work, to get herself out and be the indestructible Black Widow. Her hands and feet are free, so she has everything she needs... Getting shot in her most crucial joints have sapped her energy, and she doesn't want to acknowledge the fact that she is in so much pain. Can barely move her arms, her leg. Everything is stiffening. She just wants to slide away for a little while, and her eyes are so heavy. She can't remember the last time she slept. It must have been in Valdre's bed- good God, that sounds like so long ago now. And her attempted escape from that tower led her to also have a sprained ankle, which is quite honestly the least of her problems with three gunshot wounds taking precedence. Just excellent.

She needs her energy. She won't be of any use if she's dead on her feet because she's tired. Sleep just sounds so _rational_...

Her next conscious thought is that she shouldn't have been so careless as to fall asleep as she jerks awake. (_Never show weakness to your captors. They will exploit it, and you will be dead_.)

There is no air flowing when the smell starts to get bad. Hours must have passed, and she berates herself for her inability to stay awake. Nothing good came of it- in fact, her shoulders and knee hurt _more_ now than they did before if that's even possible, and feel as if they are locked up. _Stupid_, Black Widow thinks. _Stupid and weak_. The assassin recalls her training, back to when she was just learning about being captured.

(_Analyze the situation. Take stock of what you have and what you need to do._)

Well, she doesn't have a lot. That's quite certain. And she needs to get out of the room and back to base. Needs the doctors to fix her.

He has become more bloated, the corpse; she wants to know how all these fucking flies are getting in the room. He smells faintly rotten, but she doesn't pay any heed to it. She has much knowledge about decomposition, knows his internal organs are liquefying. He'll be leaking soon.

When she tries to shift herself so that she is sitting, every wound explodes in pain and molten heat. Before she gets out of the room, she realizes with reluctance, she is going to have to take the bullets out.

She hopes they haven't gone deep, because she knows she's going to have to dig them out whether she wants to or not. And god, she doesn't want to. It hurts, but she doesn't want to acknowledge it. Not supposed to acknowledge it. She feels blood on the back of her left shoulder, so she takes a breath and hopes it was a through-and-through. She heaves her ailing right arm across her body, uses her good leg to prop it up as tears sting her eyes, and gingerly touches the back off her shoulder. The skin is surprisingly cool to her fingertips despite the fact that it feels like fire beneath her skin, burning in the connective tissues; breathing in ragged relief when she recognizes the jagged edges of an exit wound, the splinters of blowback debris embedded it her skin. It's now the least of her worries. Well, the least of her worries above the ankle.

She props herself up on a wall. She hopes she doesn't pass out, but she has a feeling she will. She's never pulled a bullet out of herself before, no anesthetic or even a fucking Advil.

She leans over her knee, arguably the most dire of her gunshot wounds. It is not pleasant, and she growls as she realizes that her chances for escape will be near zero with this knee. It looks like the bullet didn't quite shatter the kneecap, which is on display through torn flesh, and all she can do is pluck the fragmented bullet out of her surrounding muscle that looks almost as if it has been flayed by the dullest of knives.

Black Widow leans back after she has gotten as many of the fragments as humanly possible without actual surgical equipment. All she can do is straighten it and hope that it heals up as well as it can.

She then starts on her right shoulder. It's her dominant hand, and she needs it without a piece of lead stuck up in her shoulder somewhere.

(_Trace the bullet tract. If the bullet is shallow, use two fingers to pull it out. Beware of splintering._) She uses her middle finger. She prods the bloody wound, and it burns _so badly_ she can't help but hiss. She's glad the bullet hit where it did. She could easily be dead right now if it was a little lower. She pushes in to her first knuckle, but has to stop because she's breathing so hard and it hurts so badly she's sweating. Her stomach is turning inside out.

Her eyes sting with unshed tears because _she is in agony_ when she finally finds the bullet.

She wants to scream in frustration when she realizes it is too deep to just pluck out with two fingers. She starts to sweat some more when she realizes she is going to have to make an artificial exit wound and just push it out. But she has nothing to make an exit wound. Her own blunt fingernails can only do so much.

Her gaze drifts to the dead man.

A macabre idea- a splintered bone could do the job. If it's broken right.

A heavy swallow.

She pulls her finger out of the wound, and she gasps heavily, air hissing and clawing from between her teeth when it is finally out. She takes a few moments but she doesn't want to admit that trying to take the bullet out drained her. Her throat feels like it's contracting, her stomach heaves, but she doesn't submit.

A swallow, a breath, trying to dissuade the worsening nausea, and she hoists herself away from the wall. She can't quite stand, her damaged knee won't allow it, so she moves across the floor using her good leg to pull herself along. She is right up next to the man she killed, takes his decomposing arm in her hands. She breaks the rigor, very nearly breaks his entire lower arm off with the way he is decomposing, and places his elbow on the ground.

The Black Widow in all her injured glory adjusts herself so that she can place her good knee against the middle part of his arm where the bones are at their thinnest, and holds the hand and wrist up as if she were about to split a board. She essentially is, she thinks.

She has broken arms before. It's nothing new when she throws her weight and muscle into the arm, and the combined forces result in a resounding _crack_.

The once straight lower arm of her victim is now bent at a near-perfect ninety degree angle. A perfect compound fracture. She pushes the wrist towards the elbow, and it slides unnaturally, the only thing holding it being soft tendons and malleable muscle, which catch only slightly, like pulling off leeches. She sees the splintered tip break through the skin, a flash of white smattered in dark blood against slowly discoloring skin. She pushes the bone through some more. She thinks she can hear shouting through the door. Her resolve hardens and the assassin quickly breaks the wrist against the floor so that she can wiggle a broken half of the ulna bone from its bodily confines.

She can definitely hear shouts coming from her captors behind the door. What the hell is she doing? Someone has to get in there!

No time. She moves away from the body. The bone is mostly red with decomposing blood and smells like rot and decay. Not the most sanitary conditions. She wishes she could pray to some deity that she could avoid an infection. She spits on the sharpened end of the bone and wipes the blood and spit off on her bare leg. This will not be pleasant. Mentally crosses her fingers and hopes against hope that maybe her immune system will fight any infections. She's special, maybe she is special in that way too.

The sweating starts again, and she tries to not shake as she reaches her left hand behind her right shoulder. She searches for a spot of soft tissue, and after she shuts her eyes tightly and after taking her tongue between her teeth, the Black Widow stabs herself. She bites down, teeth grinding into her tongue, and her entire body spasms violently at the self-inflicted intrusion. The bone is sharp enough to cut, but blunt enough to feel as if she just jammed a spoon into her shoulder. She'll have to guide the bullet there, since it isn't at the right angle, but right now, she is just doing her damnedest to not groan or scream. She jerks the bone out.

All the liquefied organs and skin and dead blood draining to the middle of the room. Hers chases it down, the red mixing with the red.

Her hand is shaking quite obviously now as she brings her makeshift surgical tool to the primary bullet wound. The door shakes as the men pile up outside, ready to charge into the room. There's no time to draw this out any more than she already has. She shoves the bone into the wound, almost instantaneously comes in contact with the bullet, can't stop the scream that grinds out. Her breath is thready and fast as the door opens, and there is literally no time left as she uses a fist to pound the bullet out of her shoulder, like a fucking railroad spike. She can't help herself and she throws up nothing but bile and dry heaves.

It slides through, and she wishes she could feel some relief as the bullet plinks out of her, clicking against the concrete wall and leaving a trail of drying blood, but she doesn't. Only pain and roiling waves in her abdomen and she doesn't even have the strength to pull the cadaverous scalpel from where it sits lodged between her bones.

She is sure they're swarming her like bees, but doesn't worry about the men anymore because the pain and nausea overwhelm her and white and gray closes over her vision until she can no longer feel the pain.

She wakes up much later (_at least she thinks its much later_), and the bone is no longer in her shoulder, and the body, the realized _gold mine_ of weaponry is gone. Her shoulder feels like it is only a low ember now rather than a blaze, but as soon as she moves the inferno erupts again, and she just doesn't have the strength to deal with this any more. It is all she can do with what she has left to move herself onto her back, and she loses the battle with unconciousness.

* * *

Sometime between when active decay becomes advanced, a group of men come. There are five of them and are all _very_ large and _very_ muscular. Her trained eyes automatically focus on the one who stands in the corner with an AK-47. Her shoulders, her leg, hell, her whole _body_ feels so stiff and sore, like she can't even lift a finger in defiance and the barrel pointed right at her is quite the deterrent without all the tightness and pain. She wants to hurt, to _kill_, and her hands and legs are uncuffed and she suddenly knows that this is the ultimate torture. Defenselessness.

Not that she can't deal with that. She can and will.

They seem to have a plan of attack as four of the group advance upon her. She struggles in vain to get away, and the agony that comes in its wake makes it seem hardly worth it because there is nowhere she can really go. Her knee is emanating waves of pain, and even if she could run, she is ever aware of the solid walls of concrete. They have her backed into a corner, the walls rough at her back, and she can't lash out with her hands because her shoulders have been rendered incapacitated and knee on just this side of useless. Three of them hold her down. She tries to rebel against their hands (_she hates being touched_) but it doesn't hinder them. It doesn't hinder the one who brutally forces himself inside her, without preamble or hesitation.

It always hurts somewhat, either sex or rape, but she can't hide the grimace on this one. There's too much pain, the wounds in her shoulders are raw, brutalized, especially the right one with the rough treatment she just put it through and her knee seems like it's been blown to pieces. She hears him growl in pleasure, and the others are shouting indecent cheers at him.

"Fuck her 'til she bleeds, Cano!"

She won't acknowledge it, but bleed she does.

When 'Cano' finishes, they take turns. The one right after the first comments on how awfully she is bleeding. "Got razors on that cock we don't know about?" asks the second man with a laugh.

Everything hurts, inside, outside. She closes her eyes and goes elsewhere while they call her their bitch and their little slut and their red whore.

It seems endless.

The last one pulls out of her, and the first one considers going again. One of them, the one who started with the AK, says he has to save something for his wife. They all think this is very funny. By the time they have had their fun with her, she feels as if she has been taken so many times there is literally no skin left inside her. Feels as if they've jammed themselves so far in she can feel them in her throat, vile and burning and acrid.

She realizes too late that that taste isn't an aftershock. She turns her face to the drain and heaves only stomach acid into her mouth and she spits it out in the drain as the dry heaving begins. The Black Widow doesn't understand why she feels so vulnerable and exposed and downright filthy. She isn't supposed to _feel_ like this. (_Emotion is weakness._)

Understanding dawns soon after the quakes stop, and she knows she won't be escaping. Not on her own. She tries to take a deep breath, only succeeds in getting a lungful of rotting corpse stench. (_Not_) for the first time in her life, she regrets killing someone. Rotten corpse stench and the smell of sweat and men fill her as she breathes one more time.

She'll wait. They'll send someone for her. They have to, she's their top asset, and they won't just let all the years of careful planning go down the drain. The thought is a comfort. She is valued by them. They won't leave her.

So she waits.

* * *

The days turn into weeks. Time becomes very relative. She can't remember the last time she had something to eat and can feel all the classic signs of starvation- her muscles, painstakingly strengthened, are beginning to atrophy. Her once solid abdomen is caving in on itself. She can count each of her ribs, and her hipbones are sticking out so far she swears they'll break the skin. The only thing on her mind is food. A part of her wishes the body was still in the cell she she could at least have _something_. God, she is so hungry. And her mouth is dry and sticky because they only give her enough water to stay alive and she has been forced to drink her own urine multiple times.

The Black Widow, one of the most prolific assassins the world over, hates how they have made her so weak.

Her wounds are healing. Slowly. Painfully. She has always been a quick healer, but she is always stiff and uncomfortable and in pain. Her knee still doesn't look good, but can only be grateful to the shooter's shitty aim that her kneecap isn't shattered. Doesn't mean her muscles aren't torn to shreds, though. And it developed a nasty infection a few days ago. It isn't spreading, which she thinks must be due to her excellent immune system or something, and that means she won't have to cut off her own leg. Taking the bullets out had been hard enough. And she wouldn't even have a tool this time.

She hears some of the men complaining about how they're afraid she'll die before she gives them answers. With her ear pressed up against the door, their commander asks them why that would be a problem. She knows their answer before she hears it. They want her as their plaything. They don't want to give that up yet.

Their visits have become the only constant in her captivity. Many of them have been in multiple times, but she has stopped looking at faces. She knows she'll remember them when she gets out. Her photographic memory wouldn't allow anything else, and she is sure the Black Widow will eventually make grand plans to slaughter them all in a spectacularly violent fashion. But she can't right now. Can barely remember her own name, let alone consider a bloody vengeance.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, another crew of men come. She absently ponders how many of them that they even have at their disposal, but her thought processes are so sluggish she can barely remember why that knowledge would be useful. She also hopes that they'll be quick. Her thighs are still raw from the last round of her captors who had come through, and she has bled enough down there already.

Instead of forming a loose circle around her and then proceeding to hold her down as they normally do when they come to use her, they are quick and efficient as they jerk her to her feet, and her legs threaten to collapse as soon as she is upright. She leans heavily on her captors (_she distantly hates them even more_) and her infected knee won't bend, won't even work the way she wants it to.

She is led out of the room, and her conditioned mind immediately jumps on the fact that they are leading her outside her prison and into the halls. Despite the starvation and dying brain cells, she knows an opportunity when she sees one.

Escape.

Freedom.

The ideas leap into her mind, settling into her limbs and she prepares to strike out at them. She has taken down more men, but not under such dire circumstances and certainly not when she is in such poor condition.

The Black Widow is willing to risk it though. With three gunshot wounds, dehydration, and malnutrition she is ready to forfeit her life in order to _just be free_ of this place.

Because no one is coming for her, and she chastises herself internally for thinking she even has value. This is exactly what they trained her for- she's a tool of the republic, an instrument of justice and peace, and a gifted individual who has been chosen for a purpose that is greater than herself and no one else can do. A privilege. And she needs to fight for it. (_To waste such talent would be criminal._) Because in the end, she's just a tool. Expendable and insignificant.

She is on her own.

Her fists clench, and she is preparing to crush some windpipes until... What is that smell? They have led her to a room with a chair and a table and my God... There is food.

A dinner plate of epic proportions in her eyes, and a veritable feast for her starved body. She leans, almost lunges, towards it with the fervor only a person who has gone many weeks without food could even begin to understand. Her eyes are wild with desperation, the rich scent of the food beckoning her like a siren song. They release her and she basically collapses in the chair at the small table. They've given her no silverware but that doesn't stop her from digging in like an absolute savage. There is chicken and potatoes and spinach and snow peas and she swears she has never ate a more delicious array of anything in her life. It's not neat or pretty and her guard is totally down because her body and mind are literally singing because _she has food_. She finishes far too quickly, and the men drag the table and plate away, and she misses it as soon as it is gone, but the feeling of being full is just too good.

Without warning, she heaves forward on the chair, and the beautiful, beautiful food is expelled from her body. She ate too quickly, and even if she hadn't, it has been so _long_.

When they finally tie her to the chair, her body is simply euphoric, and her stomach doesn't feel so much like a shriveled pear despite the fact that it is cramping, and her limbs feel less shaky. They don't make a big effort in tying her. She looks so harmless right now with her birdlike wrists and knobby bones.

The euphoria lasts as long as she can stave off the inevitable conclusion that this is where the tried and true torture methods will be brought in from their arsenal. That's why they bothered to feed her. So they wouldn't accidentally kill her. She recognizes the clamps and car batteries, the tubs of water, the brass knuckles. All she has seen.

All she can survive.

She smiles.

* * *

**2 Days Later**

Far away from the humid streets of São Paulo, the Sierra Nevadas rise up, discernible from the deep blue sky by a slight gray hue, and the caps of white that shine like lodestars in the daytime. The desert floor cools as the sun has fallen and the moon is now high in the sky. Disrupting the endless sand and low sagebrush is a massive building, just barely visible in the dead of a desert night. There are few lights, casting an unobtrusive glow across the one touch of humanity in a landscape still dominated by mother nature.

Within the facility, the emblem of an eagle is emblazoned on the walls. The eagle watches as SHIELD Director Nick Fury puts in a call to his most trusted agent.

The agent answers from a low warehouse building in São Paulo. The bow looks archaic to the naked eye in such a sleek, modern facility.

The director asks if he has found anything yet.

Found something he has. Bodies litter the halls, full of blood and gore and it looks like something out of a Hollywood film it is so graphic, but he knows its not. Knows whose work this is. "A lot of bodies. They have cameras, too. It's likely we'll be able to find where they stored the video. Whether or not we will actually have the feed is doubtful."

"Trace her path first. Then look for video. If she's consistent, there probably won't be any left anyway."

"Not my first rodeo with this one, Director." The agent with his bow and arrows has been trying to track the Russian assassin for weeks, and when they received intel that she had been captured by private contractors in Brazil... Well, he was as happy as he could be expected to be. He doesn't rejoice in the loss of human life, never has and probably never will. Unlike the psychopath whose work he is seeing the fruits of as he tracks the string of bodies. At least if he finds her this will stop. They received word from their sources that she had escaped about 15 hours ago, and left quite the trail of destruction behind her.

"I am always amazed at how you make my formal title sound like insubordination."

"Phil hates that, too," he responds wryly, missing his normal handler. Sadly, Coulson is away doing 'something highly classified' and Fury has always taken a special interest in their Russian friend.

Without further preamble, Fury orders his agent to report when he has finished his inspection and severs the communication, and Agent Clint Barton is on his own.

His first objective is to find the beginning of all this chaos. Walk through her path, confirm with video if it still exists.

He follows the hall to the most likely place they kept her according to the building schematics, to a door to a concrete room. A literal bunker with no way out. A computer monitor sits with the flurry of white and black taking up the screen beside the doorway in the small room that is devoid of dead bodies.

He opens the door with only a general idea of what he would find within. The room itself does not look so terrible. No larger than twelve by twelve, walled and floored completely in cement. No windows. One drain with red stains trailing into it, and the remains of human excrement on top of it. The only truly notable feature of the room is the stench. The smell is awful, a potent mixture of human refuse, sweat, and... is that decomposition? He puts a hand to his face out of reflex, and tries not to gag. _What happened here?_

He sees the camera on the ceiling in the corner. Figures that is what the monitor was for.

He exits quickly and slams the door, all too happy to be away from that pit. It echoes down the hallway filled with the dead. Goes to the computer.

There is no way to type any commands since it is just a simple monitor, so he searches for a USB port. He finds one, and inserts the extraction software via flash drive. Hell if he knows if it will work. Tech services gave it to him in his searches for the Black Widow, and has thus far proven unfruitful.

Which is probably why he is so flabbergasted when the stored feed is rejuvenated on the screen, and a small bar at the bottom indicates the file is downloading. He _cannot_ believe she didn't destroy it. She _always_ destroys the video. A small feeling of victory tightens in his stomach.

He knows he should keep searching the facility, but he is drawn to the screen by her. The first clear images of the Black Widow SHIELD has ever obtained.

She is such a little thing for such a deadly killer. And beautiful. So, so beautiful, but Clint knows that there is a hidden emotionless malice behind those simpering green eyes. Her red hair isn't long, worn loosely around her shoulders with a distinct curl to it. Her lack of clothing comes as a bit of a shock, and Clint almost feels compelled to cover his eyes, to look away for the sake of propriety. He may be a man, but he still likes to think that he still holds onto some form of decency. An old holdover from the days before he had so much blood on his hands.

But the SHIELD agent only stares at her nude form with a clinical eye. The nudity should have been unsurprising. Many captors are fond of it. You never realize how much you hide behind your clothes until you are forced to be without them. A lesson he has learned on several occasions.

He sees her first act, and he is almost surprised the guard didn't fall for it. She looks so goddamned innocent with the watery eyes and the shrill cries of terror.

_We know who you are, Black Widow._

And then she goes silent and cold. She puts off an air of impenetrability, of strength and intimidation; like she is above them, she looks superior with an expression of veiled smugness.

He sees her first failed escape attempt. She kills the man with such ease, and Clint scowls at the fact that she feels absolutely no remorse, has no nightmares in the predawn hours about all the souls she has claimed. She rushes for the door, and it's thrown wide open by her lithe form. He can't see what is happening outside the room but he is sure that if he had audio, he would be getting an earful of dying men. There are three flashes of a light, indicative of gunshots, and all of a sudden Hawkeye thinks, _she's dead?_

But she's not. She must have been shot three times, the red wounds revealing themselves as she is tossed back into the cell. Both shoulders and a knee. _How the hell did she escape on that leg? _Clint can't tell all that well from the imprecise pixelation on the video, but he thinks that she must have shattered a kneecap. The knee is the worst place to get shot with too many crucial bones in the way of the angry bullet.

He knows he's gaping as he watches her perform surgery on herself with a dead man's arm bone. Hawkeye tries to breathe slowly at the pained sounds that seem to tear unwillingly from her; he reminds himself what she is, and doesn't feel so sympathetic anymore.

He speeds the footage, figuring he could maybe get a sense of what may have happened by the rest of it.

The visits by all the men. The continual rapes. Her dry heaves when they finish. Agent Barton skips ahead.

The way her ribs and spine become more and more pronounced. Her desperate attempts at survival.

His throat is burning. Call it idealism, call it naivety. What he is seeing as absolutely barbaric. No matter what she is. He tries to remind himself of what she has done, how many lives she has ended or destroyed... She looks so damn pitiful, down there on the concrete floor, shivering like it was ice.

The last image before the screen goes black is the men taking her away. Probably for torture. She staggers to her feet, and they drag her along with them, naked and thin, and good God, that _knee_. He turns from the now-dark screen, the feed over and a clearer picture of what happened in that room. The download has completed and he takes the flash drive before leaving behind the room.

He needs to find where her escape began.

He follows the scent of decay, and finds the trail of bodies that begins in a room with what looks like the remains of a smashed chair and as he glances around, sees the classic torture devices. Waterboarding. Electrocution. Flecks of blood across brass knuckles. There are four bodies, three on one side of the room where it looks like they were piled up against the door and then shoved out of the way, and one on the other. He crouches down to examine the three. Died from gunshot wounds, obviously, shot from mildly close range, but no less than fifteen feet.

The lone body on the other side died from a snapped neck. Clint had noticed his ragged state of dress as soon as he walked in the room. There are only scraps of shirt left behind and the guard's jeans are torn up. A quick scan of the room reveals that none of the guards have belts or shoelaces. She must have been desperate for weaponry. He begins to understand her escape. She used one of her guards as a human shield. The tattered clothes, however, he's a bit foggy on.

Another look around and he spots a camera, lying haphazardly on its side on a tripod, probably knocked over in a struggle. There must be recorded surveillance of what transpired in this room, he realizes, if she didn't destroy the first set of footage.

She must have managed to untie herself he figures when he sees the unfurled ropes near the wooden remains. That's when the bodies started.

_Her breathing is ragged. Her muscles spasm and twitch sporadically from the treatment with the car battery, but sixteen volts is hardly enough to truly harm her. Hurt her, sure._

_Her lungs quiver for air as the most recent visit involved total submersion in a tank of water with the top locked closed against her scrabbling fingers. She coughs occasionally, still tasting the stale water in her lungs._

_Her face is swollen from repeated blows, and in some places, her skin is broken and bleeding from the times they favored brass buckles over bare fists. Both of her eyes are black, but they haven't swollen shut, so she is glad lack of vision will not present problems._

_They've left her alone for a few hours and it has given her the chance to truly consider escape again. She takes stock of her injuries- at least three cracked ribs, but she doesn't think they are broken, maybe one or two cracks in some of her facial bones, quite a few bruises and lacerations, a few third and second-degree burns, and all on top of the three gunshot wounds._

_She feels weakened by weeks of terrible treatment, little sleep, and barely any food and water, but that's not an issue. She knows how to fight like prey backed into a corner, run ragged by pursuers. This is what she was trained for._

_There's four guards. One has a belt and she eyes it as if she were avaricious and the belt was gold. She can use it. She plans her attack before she begins to slowly, unobtrusively, untie her hands. She wriggles her wrists, loosening the ropes ever so slowly, hyperaware of the eyes on her, and tries to reach her fingers back towards the ropes. They didn't bind her legs. The men still come sometimes between torture sessions. They've been very thorough. She feels so sore, especially inside where it's so raw it feels like she's been bludgeoned. Which, when she truly considers it, she essentially has been. They still keep her naked, even though she's quite certain they don't find her very attractive anymore. She's swollen and bloody, starved and emaciated. They just want the release. Animals._

_Animals she is looking forward to decimating in the next three seconds._

_Her hands are free and she doesn't waste a moment. They noticed when she got one hand free but by then it was too late. She puts no weight on her right knee as she goes for the guard closest to her chair. She drives an elbow into his throat, just enough to stun, and wraps an arm around his neck, subjugates him into being a crutch and she swings herself so that she is behind his back, all on one leg. The Black Widow ignores how her arm is imperceptibly shaking and uses the guard's body as a human shield. He's carrying an AK-47 in his right hand, and she shoves his finger off the trigger with her free hand and replaces it with her own and easily picks off the guards. She flinches at each shot, knowing it's going to draw attention to the room. They are all down, and the only one left alive is crying for mercy from her._

_He rates not a second consideration from the Black Widow and she snaps the neck of the man who unwillingly protected her. As he falls, she falls since he was the only thing keeping her on her feet. She takes the belt and only has time to grab two__ guns and a shoelace before she hears footsteps thundering down the hall. She's got to hurry. Dragging herself across the room, she shuts the door and turns the locking mechanism. Shoves the three bodies in front as well, since odds are that someone is going to have a key.__ It'll buy her some time._

_She rolls quickly instead of dragging over to the chair she was held in. She picks it up and the shoddy workmanship does the work for her as she slams the chair to the ground. It fractures apart, and she quickly sorts through the wood and snatches two pieces that are a few inches taller than her hands, and a few shorter bits that are just a few inches in length._

_She needs to run and her knee needs support._

_She rolls back to the one guard whose neck she snapped. The assassin makes quick work of the flannel shirt he wore, ripping it into lengthwise strips about an inch or two wide with her fingers and teeth._

_There is pounding on the door. She glances towards it quickly, and sees they haven't disengaged the lock yet. She still has time._

_She takes the longer pieces of wood from the chair and places them on either side of her ailing knee, and secures them tightly in place at the top and bottom with two strips of flannel._

_She needs to finish quickly, as she hears the men calling for someone with a key._

_With the remaining wood bits and cloth, she crafts a makeshift splint for her knee. She wraps her knee as tightly as she can, even has to rip up the guards's jeans for extra bindings, steals the shoelaces off all the dead men and uses three of the eight to make sure her mish-mashed splint is secure._

_The door opens, and hits her bulwark of humans. It's time for her to go. She tests the splint out gingerly. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but she can put weight on that leg and that's an improvement. She takes the four guns, and smiles when she finds all the clips full and ready to kill._

Agent Barton exits the room into the primary hallway leading out of the facility. This is where the scene becomes one of a graveyard. The blood spatter and shell casings give him a pretty good idea of what happened.

_She blasts out of the room like a hellcat, wielding two of the pilfered AK-47s with the other two against her back. Her other pieces of weaponry: one belt and five shoelaces. The belt is cinched around her bony waist and it sags drastically even though it is held through the absolute tightest hole. The shoelaces are hung on it like they are rags on a towel rack. She hopes the guns will get her out of here, because her injuries are in agony, burning her more and more with each step she takes. The splint she put on her knee will not hold for very long. Despite her mastery of close-quarters combat, Black Widow doesn't know if she will be able to manage for very long if it comes to that on this day. She prays it won't._

_In a hail of blood and bullets, she begins her trek down the long hallway to the doors of the facility._

Hawkeye carefully picks his way around the masses of bodies dead from gunshot wounds. She must have dragged herself along this corridor in such pain. He sees two abandoned AK-47s. She ran out of bullets here, but the shell casings didn't stop.

_She is almost there. _

_She can see the doors as the blood from her knee begins to trickle down her leg; the makeshift splint has soaked through. She shoulders weep with blood and ache from the concussion of the recoiling weapons. Her entire body screams from the strain, screams from weakness. All her body wants to do is collapse, but the spy doesn't let herself give into such temptation._

_She has reached some sort of front room, and she hears a panicked voice off to the side. She whips her head and the barrels of her weapons at the voice, and the words out of his terrified mouth are the last things she wants to hear. "__Please, we need the police! She is killing everyone!" He sounds like a child, petulant and afraid and crying for his mother._

_No. No. No. Not when she is so close. There are so few of them left, but they are no longer attempting to fight back. They are fleeing. She hears them call her the devil in a woman's body, that they literally cannot kill her. Nothing will stop her evil._

_She doesn't care. She just needs to get out._

Ahead, the trail of bodies stops abruptly, only one man lying cold on the floor with a phone clutched in his hand, the muscles still rigid.

Hawkeye knows what lies outside. He'd had a general briefing of the event before he boarded the jet, and knows that outside he will find the bodies of seven police officers. Three apparently dead by strangulation, and four dead by injuries apparently caused by their own weapons. He sweeps this first room, and it lacks any sort of deboinar flourish, and is just as dank and boring as the rest of the warehouse. Then he spots the door stamped with the word _Surveillance_. He almost laughs. Could they be any more obvious?

He kicks the door in because he has no spare patience for picking locks today. There are many blank monitors, like the one he found outside the Black Widow's prison. Thankfully, there is a keyboard here, and that is all he needs. He inserts the USB and the screens flicker to life, and he begins to seek out the video he needs. Parking Lot Cam A. Cam B. Cam C. Gives him clear angles of the whole parking lot and a ways beyond as he opens the video of what went down not even a day before.

_The Russian spy limps out of the building, her steps frantic, her expression bordering on deranged. The only things in her mind are her objectives: Get a safe distance away. Go to safe house. Treat injuries. Request extraction._

_Her weapons are out of ammo and she tosses away the extra weight. As soon as the abandoned AKs hit the ground, she hears the squeal of a police siren. "Fuck," she growls in Russian, under her breath in one of her first words in weeks._

_She is limping towards the nearest alleyway, to the darkness and to hiding places. She marvels at how freaking far away it is when the first squad car screeches to a halt twenty feet away from her._

_No. No. This cannot happen. Police are not a part of the plan. _

_Get a safe distance away. Go to safe house. Treat injuries. Request extraction._

_She is still limping away when the voice of a São Paulo police officer requests sharply and loudly, "This is the São Paulo police!" No shit, Sherlock. "Get on your knees and put your hands on your head!"_

_"We are armed and will shoot!"_

_Three squad cars pull around her. Seven police officers emerge. They vary in age from early to mid fifties to a young man who looks barely older than the Black Widow herself. _

_She is outnumbered and outgunned._

_So she does the only thing she can do: go along and manipulate._

_It is surprisingly easy to make herself cry as she turns with her hands in the air. As soon as they see her tear-stained face, two officers drop their weapons to their sides and slowly approach her as if she were a skittish horse. "Don't do that," they mutter to their fellow officers, making a gesture for them to lower their weapons. "Can't you see you're scaring her?"_

_All of the officers step out from behind their protective car doors since they don't consider a belt and shoelaces 'armed and dangerous.' How silly they are. How little they truly know._

_She lets her body tremble, and is sure she looks terrified. "Please, don't hurt me," she requests in Portuguese. Her voice cracks and wobbles artificially, and she knows she is getting on their good side as another officer reholsters his gun and joins the two closest to her._

_"We won't hurt you, we just want to ask you a few questions." His eyes are absorbing her appearance. Probably thinks she is overwrought with emotional trauma by the way she looks._

_"Just don't hurt me," she pleas pitifully again, and she slowly lowers her arms as if to beg for forgiveness._

_The rest of the weapons come down. "I'm calling an ambulance," says the youngest of the group. "She looks hurt real bad." No, she decides firmly. She has to act now before anyone else catches wind that she is in São Paulo._

_There are the three officers within an arm's length, the three milling by the doors, the one preparing to radio for an ambulance. With everything she has left inside of her, her hands close around the last two shoelaces, the others lost in the warehouse, and throws her injured knee into the diaphragm of the cop directly in front of her. The act is doubly painful for her as it is for him, but he lets out a stunned groan and collapses to his knees, while she uses the shoelaces as makeshift garrotes and throws them around the necks of the two stunned officers. _

_They both struggle valiantly against her, but she just pulls tighter, the confiscated laces digging into the soft skin of their necks. The four officers have noticed her fight (her desperation) and have redrawn their weapons, but she is clever enough to avoid being shot by hiding herself behind the man downed by her knee, and the other two whose necks are nearly sliced through with the violent pressure behind the shoelaces. Their movements are becoming more and more feeble. She has a wall of bodies in front of her as she steals a gun out of one of the holsters. Hell if she knows which one, or even cares at this point._

_She shifts the strangling laces to one hand. The man who had been kneed is putting up a fuss now, and she has to use her belt in the same way she used the laces. She quickly undoes the buckle and adds him to her growing collection of dying men. There is no preamble, no demands or requests for freedom. She won't be leaving any witnesses to her carnage._

_Her body is shaking quite obviously now. The pain is almost the only thing her brain can register. She raises the gun._

_(Mind over matter, Black Widow. Ignore it.)_

_She tries and tries to shove the pain aside as she fires off nearly the entire clip with a shaking arm, and feels sloppy for using so many bullets to take out only three targets. She pulls the laces and belt tighter on the throats of the men who are now losing their grip on consciousness, so she lets go of the ends of her weapons that seared into her palm so badly they left bloody tracks._

_She makes sure they are all dead and uses the remaining three bullets to ensure they never get up again._

_Leave no witnesses._

_Her vision is growing foggy as she dispatches them. When it is over, when her body is crumbling like a dead leaf, the gun falls from her fingers, and she literally has no energy to bend down and pick it up. The pain is overwhelming. Maybe she already has been overwhelmed by it, but she just keeps moving._

_She begins her trek towards the alleyway._

___Get a safe distance away. Go to safe house. Treat injuries. Request extraction._

Hawkeye is, for the umpteenth time, blown away by the Russian assassin. Will she never quit? It seems the only thing she would ever fall to would be Death's own hand. How has she not collapsed by now? Any normal human being would never have been able to pull of such feats as she had after she had gone through intense torture _and_ with three gunshot wounds. It seems impossible.

_And then a thought strikes her and it is so unbelievably basic that she just wants to scream because she doesn't think she has it left in her to deal with it. It is such a novice mistake, one she had never made, even before she was out of the Red Room._

_There were _seven_ officers. She only killed six._

_She turns her head to sound of scuffling feet, and there he is, the young officer who had volunteered to call her an ambulance._

_How she kept herself going before suddenly leaves her in a rush as she tries to take another step. Her body just quits. Literally, everything in her just goes limp and she falls like a marionette without a puppeteer. Nothing there to pull her strings and make her move._

_Nothing in her wants to move, but she can't just go gently into that goodnight. She needs to fight. To be chosen is a privilege._

_She moves away from the advancing police officer by the barest threads of whatever energy she has left, and her tenuous grasp is weaker than cornsilk. But she can't go gently._

_He is young. A rookie, by the looks of how stiffly he holds his gun at her._

_He slows his pace so that he is about five feet away from her shakily retreating form. "What is your name?" The dialect of Portuguese is slightly different, as is his accent. He's not from São Paulo. Probably a poor, remote farming village she surmises as she sees the scarring on his hands and forearms that comes with mastering a scythe. No rings on his hands. Unmarried. A tattoo of a artistic cross on his inner forearm indicates he is possibly religious._

_All this she knows about him without him saying even five words to her. She sees the radio on his shoulder, and decides the try and stall him. He is a newbie. Either forgot to call for backup or thinks he is good enough to handle her on his own. She needs to keep it that way. Give herself time to recover and keep other police away. Whatever she says is of no real consequence. He is going to be dead as soon as she stops trembling. "Black Widow."_

_"Is that your given name?" The young officer asks with a curious look in his eye._

___His inquiry is met by a brick wall. _"Yes."

_"I don't believe you."_

_She has enough energy to manage a slight chuckle. "Tough."_

_He seemed oddly comforted by her laugh. As if he thinks it means she is normal. "Come on. Everyone has a name. Mine is Ambròsio Soares."_

_She shrugs noncommitally. "My name still remains the same, Ambròsio Soares," she says, still using her good leg to move herself away. It is not that she is afraid of him. She just doesn't trust him, and he is the only thing standing between her and her freedom. She needs distance to mount any sort of offensive once she recovers._

_"I don't want to hurt you. Just calm down."_

_She wants to roll her eyes. Hurt her? Apparently he doesn't notice any of her injuries already. Instead, she answers, "I am calm." Just stall him._

_"Stop moving away then."_

_Why not? She is exhausted and her wounds are throbbing and her knee is numb with pain. She stops, and much to her surprise, he does as well. "Happy?" Black Widow asks mirthlessly._

_He answers equally seriously, "No. Do you have any idea how many men you just killed?" He hasn't seen the inside of the building, so he must think that 6 men are an astronomical number. How little he knows. Her eyes constantly flick to the radio that has thus far remained silent and unused. She needs to keep it that way._

_"Let's see... The standard AK-47 holds thirty rounds. I used all the rounds in four guns, and I probably got one guy for every three or so bullets. So upwards of forty. Not counting the ones I killed with the belt and shoelaces. Ah, and your fellow officers, so upwards of forty-six." She needs to delay him. Her knee shakes like a leaf, and her entire body is rejoicing being on the ground. She doesn't want to be here on the ground, not doing everything in her power to escape._

_He has a sick look on his face, casts a look over his shoulder at the doors of the facility. They are glass, and covered in blood. His sick look becomes even greener. Of all the things she expected him to say, to do, throw up, curse her and God and the universe, call for backup, try to shoot her, he does none of them. He asks in a small voice, "Why did you do it?"_

_It should seem obvious, but she realizes to a green cop looking in, he is so naïve to the ways of the world. Her tone is as condescending as it is commonplace as she says, "A job gone incredibly bad."_

_"A job?"_

_She laughs and is pleased when her body doesn't tremble with exhaustion as it had before. He will be ready to run soon. Just keep him distracted. "Come on, you may be a kid but even you know there are assassins out there." As she calls him 'kid' she ignores the fact that he is probably older than herself. Physically, if not actually._

_"You're an assassin?" His gun begins to tremble slightly along with his voice._

_Her shoulders and knee don't feel as heavy as they did when she dropped. So she shrugs nonchalantly, as though the bullet wounds in her shoulders are no big deal. She swallows a hiss. "And a spy, but the logistics aren't important."_

_She watches his Adam's apple bob, and can see the faint shine on his palms as he shifts his weapon around that tells her he is growing nervous enough for sweaty palms. "Why do you do it?"_

_"I just told you."_

_He shakes his head, apparently finding some of his courage again. "You told me what you are, not why you do it."_

_She hesitates slightly. He raises a fair question, but one that she cannot afford to ask. "I was born into it." A automatic answer. She doesn't consider these things. She gingerly moves her knee and legs. She wants to run. She needs to kill him and run before anything happens._

_"No kid is born into this," he says assuredly. She thinks of the tattoo on his arm._

_"Your idealism is almost admirable, Officer Soares." She never realized how nice it sounds to be idealistic. As if the world and society would exist on its own without people like her, resolving conflict without violence. If only. She kills for justice and peace. Justice and peace._

_"It's not idealism. No child is born with a desire to kill." It's the same assuredness she heard before._

_She scoffs discriminately. "I would beg to differ."_

_"So you enjoy killing?"_

_She is about to comment on the utter absurdity and audacity of his claim, but as she truly listens to the question, it makes her pause, and she feels discombobulated when she comes to the realization that she isn't sure how to answer. None of the sudden indecisiveness is shown on her face. "It's what I do."_

_"But do you enjoy it?" Will he not just stop talking? She wonders if this officer remembers that he is talking to a deadly spy and assassin. A spy and assassin who would not even be having this conversation if she could just muster the energy to move her limbs._

_"You know, you have an annoying knack for not dropping a subject," she comments, almost smirking. She hasn't truly smiled at anyone in what seems like a long time. _

_"Do you?" Soares persists stubbornly. There is curiosity in his eyes. He truly wants to know. And he still hasn't called for backup, so she answers, confidently and steadily. This is what she knows._

_"My country needs me. I must do things that I do not enjoy for the good of the people, and I do it because I know how important it is. I've learned to appreciate the necessity."_

Clint Barton nearly chokes on his own tongue at her answer. Has he been wrong about the Black Widow all along? His once-loathing changes to murky confusion in a blink. Is her perceived psychopathy just a byproduct of her absolute, unwavering dedication to her country? Perhaps she was unwillingly dragged into this life.

SHIELD's investigation into the Black Widow's past has been like tearing down a mountain armed with only a pair of tweezers. I seems that the Reds did an excellent job of erasing who she had been, if she even was anyone before she was the Black Widow. Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it seemed everything that might have been tied to her former identity was scattered like feathers in the wind. All SHIELD knows for sure is that she was born in Russia. Perhaps she doesn't even remember who she was.

It's disheartening, watching this not-meant-to-be assassin lie on the ground, still conversing with the police officer.

Why is she even giving him her attention? He figured that when she went down, it was because of the absolute horrendous strain she was putting on fresh injuries, but why is she talking?

It suddenly occurs to him exactly why- she is stalling. Gaining her strength back so she can... can kill the cop and make a run for it. That's exactly what she is doing, he sees. (_He won't admit it yet, but it scares him that he would be doing the exact same thing._)

Is she even telling the truth? That thought derails his journey towards something other than hatred. She is probably just pulling answers out of thin air, and in doing so, is buying herself time to recover and escape. Suddenly, sought-out empathy vanishes into thin air.

That's all it is.

Smoke and mirrors by the ultimate manipulator.

_Officer Soares doesn't seem as pleased with her answer as she does. "To what end? Do they ever tell you why you are sent to kill people?"_

_She growls low in her throat in annoyance. She hasn't questioned these principles in a what seems like a long time. "It's not my job to look for reasons."_

_"Then many people would call you irrational."_

_She feels a brush of irritation. She has never taken criticism well. "How so?"_

_"You never question why you do something. If you do not question something, then how are you to know it is the right thing to do?"_

_"If my country asks me to do something, I must do it. I can never disappoint my country." She bristles at the direction this line of questioning is headed, and she gingerly tries her limbs again. Easier. And her energy is being fueled by her vehemence, and she knows she will be ready soon._

_"But at what cost to yourself?"_

_Another very simple question that she has answered the same way since before she can remember. "My life has no value. I am an instrument of my country. I am theirs before I am mine."_

_He could not have looked more insulted had she slapped him across the face. "How can you say your life has no value?"_

_"I'm not here for a philosophical debate."_

_"I just asked a simple question about your beliefs."_

_Her vehemence grows into something not so platonic any more. "I am not supposed to have beliefs." She shifts slightly so that she is sitting whilst leaning forward. She is almost ready. Her arms are no longer shaking. "I kill people," she states frankly, "That is my job. I do it well, and no one can do what I do. My country needs me to maintain justice and peace."_

_"How is shooting a building full of innocent men justice and peace?"_

___That is the last straw. _Suddenly, all the pent up rage and hatred and agony and suffering and pain just flood out of her in one violent snap. "They were not innocent," she hisses, and despite a still wobbling knee, springs herself onto the young officer. His wide eyes and stiff posture tell her that he was absolutely unprepared when she attacked, and she easily dislocates his shoulder and then pries the gun from his limp hand. "You see, Officer," she begins, using the title like a taunt, "No one is innocent. They always ask you for more, and when you don't give it, they make you hand it over on a fucking silver platter." She remembers death in a white room and feels the rage and helplessness that comes along with the memory, and digs the gun into the soft flesh beneath his chin, "I have been held in that warehouse for weeks. One woman in a hive of men. Do you know what happens in those situations?" There is fire in her eyes and vengeance in her heart.

_There is fear in his eyes and for the first time, she doesn't enjoy a victim's fear. He lies paralyzed with it, but manages a nod where his vocal cords failed him._

_"Good. Because I might have red all over my hands, but so does every fucking person on the earth."_

_And then the Black Widow pulls the trigger._

And Clint Barton can only stare.

**End of São Paulo: Part 2 of 2**

******And so, we finally get our first glimpse of Hawkeye in this series :) I told you he was coming.**

******I am very aware that this scenario would be impossible for a normal person. I am operating under the assumption the serum she was given did have some affect on her.**

**Also, I am thinking of moving this story up to an M rating. This chapter pretty solidly demonstrates why I think it will be necessary. There won't be any changes in the content I publish, and it will continue to follow the general feel of the story thus far. I am just rather concerned about the level of violence that this story will contain. Please let me know what you think about the rating and if it is appropriate, or if the warnings are sufficient.**

**Please leave a review!**


	18. The Hospital Fire: Part 1 of 3

**AN1: **Thank you to all who have read this story and continue to follow it. It means the world to me, and I hope this suffices in return for the gratitude I have for all of you.

**AN2:** I didn't have the chance to reply to any reviews last chapter, which I always try to do, so my apologies! Also, high fives for anyone who spots the Fringe reference.

**AN3: **This chapter takes place one year after last chapter. Natasha is 19 and the year is 2003.

_**The Hospital Fire: Part 1 of 3**_

_A few hours outside KwaDukuza, iLembe district, South Africa_

_Officially: Private Estate of Jethro Lewis_

_Unofficially__: Home of Anton Kuzma_

_2100 hours_

He tries to roll her over and thrust down into her, but she never lets anyone on top. She has a little trouble getting back up, because good Lord, the man is a giant, but she manages it with a little bit of manipulation with her talented fingers and a quick flutter of kisses across his neck.

Once she is back where she needs to be, she swivels her hips and fakes a gasp. "You know I like being on top, baby," she whispers, running her hands along his well-muscled chest, being sure to say her words smothered in a South African accent. She can speak Afrikaans, but it turned out to be unnecessary. He is hidden by the guise of an American, so English is his preferred language.

Anton Kuzma, a Ukranian weapons manufacturer under the false name Jethro Lewis, flashes her a daring smile and moves his large hands to her hips and helps her move. "I had to try-" his words dissolve into a groan and his smile melts into something she is all too familiar with. He is nearing his precipice. The point that he is always just shy of despondency, so caught up he is in his pleasure that he can barely acknowledge the world around him. Some marks aren't so easy.

With his eyes closed, her hands drift around his neck, fingering the chain on which the small, stylized key is hung. It unlocks Kuzma's file room, a literal bunker that was secured with the best tech that Kuzma makes for himself, and only himself. She finds it a little funny that the most brilliant mechanical engineer, that particular decoration not acknowledging that American whose name she always forgets, would use an antiquated little key to guard his most valuable secrets. It never leaves his person. She supposes she can understand that. After all, there's only so much automated equipment can do when a brilliant hacker plants a virus in it. A prideful smile.

Her computer skills would be of no use against him in a fight. Anton Kuzma is ex-military and is on file as being an excellent marksman and an expert of hand-to-hand combat. Much like herself, she supposes, if she wants to look for similarities. He is but one man, so she has every confidence that she can defeat him if it ends up coming down to it. She still doesn't see why the mission is so damned complex.

The parameters call for her to pose as a maid from Cape Town because he doesn't trust Russians, seduce him (_which was painfully easy_), get the key (_which will be like taking candy from a baby_), kill him (_which will be agonizingly simple_), and steal the files of only the developmental missiles (_absolute child's play_).

It all seems a little hokey to her, too much work in what could be accomplished by a simple in-and-out hit. It's not her place to question, but she is just so sick of having sex.

It's a problem she's never been able to figure out, but she has a really hard time getting aroused. Through iron focus and sheer force of will, she can usually produce some natural lubrication, but it is a skill she has never been able to master. She can sometimes get there about halfway through the painful (_for her, anyway_) coupling, but by then there's usually so much chafing and pain it doesn't matter much anyway. It's better if the marks so happen to have a bottle of lubricant lying around, but most don't, so she just has to ignore complications, ignore the pain and do some smooth talking to assure them it's just a medical condition that she can't get wet for them. No, it's not contagious, it's genetic. Just keep going, she wants this more than they do.

And then it starts, and all she's thinking about is about when it's going to be over. And answers. The answers that would be gleaned through this interrogation that she hates. At least this mark has lube. She has been spared some discomfort.

The former military she is currently screwing is an excellent fighter, so she supposes, if she was looking for reasons, that the seduction might have been necessary. Still, a distance sniping would have worked out just fine.

But she's not supposed to be looking for reasons, so she grasps the key and yanks, breaking the chain and tossing it on the bedside table. He starts looking like he is drawing back from his orgasm, so she makes her thrusts more aggressive, leans forward and attacks his lips, hands wandering unashamedly, and soon he is back under the haze of pleasure.

The way she is supposed to shoot him is incredibly specific. The mission parameters went a little overboard stressing how important it is that he must be shot directly behind his ear, and she draws her small .22 from its resting place beneath the mussed pillows. Swivels her hips a little to keep him unaware, and places the barrel against the skin right beneath his ear, angled slightly upwards towards his brain.

The Black Widow squeezes the trigger.

The shot is slightly muffled, and the bullet doesn't come out the other side. He is still, and his face is forever frozen with his mouth ajar and eyes half-shut.

The Black Widow, fresh off a kill, crawls off the corpse and throws the sheet over his nude body, grabs the key, and replaces her maid's uniform. She can't wait to be out of it, and she can't wait to cut her hair. She hates having it long. Gets in the way in fights far more than when it's short. It typically changes with each mission, and for this mission it was grown out down to her shoulder blades and dyed black according to Kuzma's preferences of women.

The rest of her time in the house is more of what she's used to doing. She navigates the large house like it is her own, occasionally sidestepping a body. Before she took 'Jethro' to his doom, she made sure each staff member was dead. Three security guards and one other maid (_her name was Tanya Winter and Black Widow has no idea why she remembers that_).

Her knee twinges and tightens suddenly and she halts, sucking in a sharp breath at the unexpected sensation. The Black Widow leans on a wall and moves the stiff joint a few times in experimentation. This is her first undercover 'long con' since São Paulo, and she hasn't felt her knee react this way in a while. The tension dissipates enough that she can continue her trek to the room.

She unlocks the door to his heavily secured file room, the key fitting like a glove. Takes the files only for the TYR-12 through the TYR-54 missiles and slips back out, casually stepping over one of the security personnel.

She steps outside into the cool air of a South African summer night, and leaves the estate as casually and confidently as she had entered it.

* * *

She hasn't set up many safehouses in South Africa, so she has to drive a few hours from outside of KwaDukuza to Cape Town, where a shabby apartment stockpiled with weapons, food, medical supplies, and the transmission device that would get her home, awaits her arrival.

She picks the lock because she doesn't trust having a hideaway key, and enters the room. The front room looks like your average apartment, with a couch, a coffee table, several decorative paintings. But as she shuts the door, each becomes a weaponry cache. There are throwing knives taped beneath the table. The paintings hide holes in the walls where guns and ammunition are stored. Beneath the couch pillows are hidden heavy artillery, two rocket launchers and a mobile gatling gun.

She goes for the paintings first and locates her favorite handguns. She feels secure with their presence and places them on the coffee table. As she walks, the Black Widow shucks her disguise, and picks her suit up off the couch, where it was draped casually over the back rest. The Black Widow looks the part as she finally slides back into the smooth catsuit that is like a second skin. She reholsters her weapons on her hips, and places a couple small caliber guns in the thigh holsters. After sealing a few knives into the subtle pockets hidden across her uniform, she finally feels comfortable. It was hard enough sneaking the .22 into the paranoid Anton Kuzma's home, let alone any other weapons.

The firepower around her brings her peace.

The assassin goes to the kitchen, where she pops open a can of kidney beans and begins eating them straight from the can, without silverware or heating it up. As she tilts the can back like it is a beverage and not a can of pre-cooked legumes that have probably been on this shelf since the turn of the millennium, she is tempted by the presence of the knives and kitchen shears. She wants to chop her hair off _so badly_, but she knows better than to do that without permission. (_Despite the fact that she is no longer under their thumb in the Red Room, they are not above punishing her for her actions_.)

After steeling herself against the temptation, she brushes the annoyingly long strands out of her face and heads toward the back room. She needs to call for extraction.

She opens the door and is greeted by a dark room, illuminated when she pulls the cord to turn on the singular bulb in the middle of the room. The glow is yellowed by time, and she leaves tracks in the dust coating the oak floorboards, the crumbling yellow plaster of the walls and ceiling look like they could possibly qualify as structurally unsound. In the middle of the small room is a table, and upon that table is a typewriter.

She does not lack intelligence, not in the least, but she has no idea how they made the typewriters do this. There is one in every safehouse she has across the globe. They're all like two way radios, connected to the original typewriter at headquarters. Whatever she writes on this typewriter will be typed on the one at HQ, and vice versa.

She figures her superiors must have a flair for the dramatic. Why else would they use the haunted typewriter method and not communicators? She can almost laugh at their inefficiency, but they are her superiors. It's not her place to question their methods.

**[Begin Transmission]**

**Black Widow reporting. Mission successful. Extraction requested.**

She waits half a minute for the response, and the sound of the keybuttons and keylevers moving on their own never fails to give her the chills. The keys don't move as the keylevers sweep across the paper, typing the message.

**Understood. We will send a jet to the following coordinates in two hours.**

She watches as the numbers are struck out, and memorizes them. She would need a GPS to be exact, but she knows enough to rough out an approximate location, and it looks like the extraction point will be just a few miles north of Cape Town.

She stands and heads for the door, thinking that their message is complete, but there's the sound of the typewriter again.

She turns back but does not sit, choosing to read the new message standing. The words jostle her.

**Be advised, we have reports of another assassin in the area.**

**Who? **She types. She had been so focused on her mission it hadn't occurred to her there may be other interested parties in town. Intel is supposed to warn her about these things, and she is mad at them for leaving her bereft of important information. Again. Why do they seem so intent on leaving out crucial details? (_Do not criticize the actions of your superiors. They know far more than you, and you are merely their tool._)

**Our sources in the area have found several bodies killed with arrows.**

They didn't even need to specify any further than that. There is only one assassin with a fondness for using the ancient weapon. The master archer.

Hawkeye.

The Black Widow is generally closed off from the regular world. The only people who deal directly with the world of other covert assassins and spies are her handlers. Of course, it would be naïve to assume that she had never crossed paths with others in her line of work. She never gave them much time of day, as most of the conversations were about her working for someone other than Russia. (_We must never disappoint our country_.) Despite her reclusiveness, her superiors had seen it fit to inform her of the other players in the deadly game they play. Hawkeye is their primary concern, which is saying something in a world as dirty as theirs. The file they have on him is somewhat sparse, but they have enough evidence of his prowess to come to one conlusion: he is dangerous.

The stories she has heard about him are nothing short of impressive. How he can put an arrow through a pupil from hundreds of yards out. How Hawkeye and a sniper rifle are a dangerous combination and can hit any target with deadly accuracy from _miles_ away. There was one report that claimed he had shot an arrow equipped with a flash drive _into a fucking USB port_, and drained all the data from a computer. She doesn't believe that last one's actually possible.

She has never met this man, 'the man who never missed' as those in their world call him. She has heard stories is all. Seen some of his work. All she knows for certain is that he is terrifyingly accurate with his bow. An insane weapon choice if you ask the Black Widow, but it works for him.

As far as she knows, he works for the Americans, and has an impressive body count.

They won't confirm her vague suspicions, but she thinks her superiors have pined after his capabilities for years.

**We don't know if the Americans are just grandstanding or if they have legitimate cause for being in South Africa. What we do know is that those dead had links to Jethro Lewis, so they may be after your mark.**

She will need to be on her guard if Hawkeye knows she is here. At least the job is done. She'll go home and that will be that.

**The mark has been taken care of.**

**Be at the site on time.**

**[End Transmission]**

She straightens and exits the small room, and begins to prepare for her journey. Securing weapons, making sure there are no perishables in the kitchen. That sort of thing.

She hates herself for it, but she keeps glancing at the two windows of the safehouse. Keeps thinking about how many buildings he could easily set up a nest on, and could be just watching her right now. Could be nocking an arrow right now to put it through her heart.

She shuts the curtains.

* * *

General Rebrenovich's office never changes with its overt luxury and expensive feel that makes a normal man wince at how much he must have spent on such lavishness.

She almost never goes to base, let alone his office. Her nameless handlers are the ones who make contact. The last time she was at the base was last year after the hellish São Paulo mission. By the time she arrived at the medical ward, she was nearly catatonic with blood loss and exhaustion.

She's rarely here anymore, and she prefers the freedom of the outside world to the confining walls of her bleak official quarters. She's not sure why she's here at all. Usually, after a mission, she just goes straight to the next target. (_The freedom is nice. The illusion of it, anyway._)

In fact, she's only been to the General's office once...

The Black Widow isn't sure what to expect now.

One of her handlers has tried to keep a hand on her shoulder or elbow, but she continually shakes him off. He continues to do so, and attempts to lead her into the General's office by her elbow, and she restrains herself from breaking his jaw and settles for grasping his wrist and shoving him into a wall. She doesn't try to break anything, But her shove is maybe a tad more forceful than necessary. Her patience has never been that of a saint.

The handler recovers and grasps the back of her neck, where the sensitive nerves halt her under the pressure of his fingertips. "You will be paying for that at a later date," he informs her, as casual as if he were telling her about the weather.

She just raises an eyebrow as he releases her and lets her walk on her own. _He owes me for his intact jawbone._

The general is waiting, his permanently stony expression even more so. She places herself in front of him, in her military stance, feet apart and hands clasped behind her back. Her chin held high, she follows him with her eyes. Tries to keep herself from hyperventilating. All she can think about is the events that followed her last meeting with him. The images keep pushing through her mind, no matter how much she tries to bury them.

"Widow, please give me a summation of your last mission." All business. She's tired of this._ Just read the freaking report!_ she wants to shout. She wants to get out of the suffocating walls of the facility, of the suffocating memories within. She wants to get away from it all.

She doesn't let her confusion or frustration or anything else show, nor does she try to suggest that he just read her report. "I arrived in Cape Town on January 12 at 0832 hours. I made contact with the target at roughly 1810 hours. I was hired and I arrived the next day at the estate at 0700 hours-"

"Perhaps you should skip ahead to the part where you did not kill Anton Kuzma," Rebrenovich interrupts snidely.

Okay, her confusion just quadrupled. "Sir?"

"You've made a mistake." His words are said carefully, like he picked them especially for her, as his stony face became twisted in a perverse look of satisfaction, which she does not understand. She tries to not remember when he last looked like that. (_You will have to kill them, Widow. We have chosen you for this task. It is a great honor to be chosen._)

The Black Widow tries not to scoff, and only halfway succeeds. "With all due respect, sir," she says through gritted teeth, "I don't believe that's possible." She's the _Black Widow_. She doesn't just make mistakes.

His words are so condescending, and it grates on her. "Really? Because our sources have confirmed Anton Kuzma was checked into a hospital under the name Jethro Lewis in KwaDukuza a few hours after you left. Now, would you like to explain?"

She swallows thickly. Her heartrate picks up minutely. "I followed the mission parameters to the letter. I shot him exactly where-"

"Yet _somehow_ you did not kill him!" Rebrenovich near-yelled. He is in her face now. He is taller, and it somewhat nullifies her intimidation factor. "Please explain to me how that is possible!" The tension escalates quickly in the small space. The tempest in her mind quiets in the face of her superior's words and her supposed mistake.

She doesn't let herself look wounded by his disappointment and anger. "It is possible to survive a shot to the brain and spinal cord. Even if the heart stops it is possible his brain was not yet dead, and he could have been revived... but it was highly unlikely anyone would discover him until the next day, and by that time it wouldn't matter."

His eyes were like gaping black holes. "Did you know that Mr. Kuzma was undergoing renal failure and had an in-home nurse administer dialysis treatments every week?"

Shit. She wetted her lips and tried to reason, "No, sir. Intel did not inform me-"

"Stop blaming your short-comings on Intel!" Rebrenovich scolds loudly, so close to the Black Widow that she can feel his breath on her face.

"It's not blaming if it's true!" Widow finally explodes, the tension built finally sparking. "If I don't know who the hell is coming and going before I get there and I am allowed no reconnaissance time, how the fuck can you expect me to know these things?" They are being so unfair! She does so much better in her own, when they just give her a target. She can stay under the radar and take out more targets if they would just _leave her alone._

One moment she is staring down Rebrenovich's increasingly red face, and the next she is facedown on the red carpet, her cheek stinging faintly.

(_Your overconfidence is unbecoming of you_.)

"We have always known you were insubordinate, Black Widow, but we did not know how insubordinate. You disobeyed direct orders, and in doing so, have failed this organization and this country."

The slap seemed to bring her back to her reality.

Black Widow has never felt like more a a failure, but the anger still burns in her gut like a cauldron of toxic waste. She has thrown everything in her life away for them! Everything! And they're calling her a failure? She wants to lash out as she picks herself up off the carpet, but her handler must sense her intentions as she begins to stand, and grasps her arms behind her back. She struggles for only a moment before realizing its futile. Her handlers are very strong, and after all, she shouldn't even be contemplating striking out. (_It is a great honor to be chosen_.)

(_Failure is synonymous with torture. Failure is not an option. Insubordination is not an option_.)

The General's voice is hissing and cruel. "You are pathetic. You are nothing without us. What would you do without us? I'll tell you: you would be set adrift in a world you do not know and cannot hope to function in." He leans close to her, "You are nothing. A tool for the republic and you would do well to remember that." He steps back, leaving Black Widow shaking with guilt and humiliation and horrendous fear because she knows what happens next.

What their punishment will be.

She swallows all her emotion, these feelings she shouldn't be having. How can she be so ungrateful? They've given her evertaking, _but they've taken everything too _her brain reminds with an image of blue eyes dying. It doesn't matter, she decides firmly. She is a tool of the republic. A harbinger of death and justice and peace.

"If he survived the shot he is probably brain-damaged, and possibly paralyzed as well. The threat is neutralized-" she tries to suggest, her voice addled with self-loathing and desperate supplication.

The General laughs a cold laugh. "The mission called for Anton Kuzma to be dead. Is brain damaged and paralyzed dead, child?"

The tears sting at the _child_, but she won't let them fall. "No, sir." Her voice is broken as her head falls and her face looks upon the floor.

Her handler tightens his grip on her elbows. The General addresses him coolly, "Take her to the basement. Show her what such flagrant insubordination will earn her. Then take her back to her quarters. I think some reeducation might be in order." His words speak of dark things, of a horrible nightmare on the grandest scale. She can't let them keep her here. She can't go back to the Red Room.

Her head snaps up at his words, her tone pleading now. "Please, sir!" Black Widow begs, as her handler begins to pull her towards the door. "I can make up for it. Please, let me fix it!" The handler, realizing that she wouldn't cooperate, begins to drag the unwilling assassin out of the office. She digs her heels in and tries to stop, wants to convince them that she knows _exactly_ how worthless she is, _exactly_ how she is only a tool for her country, _exactly_ how she is nothing without them.

That she was foolish and stupid to even think that she could exist without them.

"Please!" She tries, one last time, "I'll do whatever you want! _I can fix it!_"

She fears her plea has fallen upon deaf ears, until... "Stop," General Rebrenovich commands. "Please continue, Black Widow."

The handler quits dragging her, but doesn't let go of her arms. Like she is a criminal begging for a second chance. "I can go back in," her voice colored with pure relief that she has a chances to argue for herself. Rebrenovich, though, does not look impressed by her relief, her weakness.

She steels herself once more, because she is nothing if not resilient. They want the Black Widow. They will get her. "Send me back and I'll make sure there is nothing left of Anton Kuzma to save." Her voice is now pure venom and resolve. The light has no place here.

The General's look is pleased.

The Black Widow tries to not dread what that means.

**End of The Hospital Fire: Part 1**


	19. The Hospital Fire: Part 2 of 3

**AN1:** Thank you all for your reviews, alerts, and favorites. I love you guys, even you lurkers who I never hear from. You guys are great too.

**AN2:** Sorry for the update rift. School has been hectic as of late, and the words just weren't coming to me. Plot and dialogue were flowing like water. The stuff in between was more like molasses in -30 degree weather.

**AN3:** This chapter is a continuation of last chapter. Natasha is age 19 and it's 2003.

playlist: _The Drift_ by Blackmill, _Until It Sleeps_ by Apocalyptica (originally performed by Metallica)

_**The Hospital Fire: Part 2 of 3**_

**A Few Days Earlier**

In Clint's experience, South Africa always leads to shitty things.

His steps are but a whisper across the ground as he approaches a tree he thinks will give him a good vantage point into the mark's bedroom. "I don't like this," he states without fear of being heard. He's well hidden in the trees and shadows at the fringe of the property, and he knows from his cursory scans of the property manifest that there are no cameras or sensors out this far.

The communicator crackles a little before Hawkeye hears, "What, going into a hit without running recon?" Phil Coulson's voice never fails to sound absolutely calm and dry. It's honestly his superpower.

And it is true. Before making the journey to Cape Town, he had been on a mission in Addis Ababa when he received an urgent message from Phil, telling him he had been reassigned to take a series of hits in South Africa. The hit would be on a highly dangerous individual, Anton Kuzma, along with four close associates who knew of his unsavory activities after he left Russia in selling his missile designs to powerful gang leaders and criminal syndicates the world over. Yeah, not a good dude. As far as Hawkeye knows, the Russians want him dead, too.

It was apparently too advanced for the agent they had originally assigned. It's an understatement to say Hawkeye had been pissed at Phil. His handler knows exactly how much he hates South Africa, and how much South Africa hates him. _You know if I start shooting arrows around, Solomon will be all over me in a matter of days,_ he'd said, and had suggested using a sniper rifle instead. Phil had assured him SHIELD wanted him to use the arrows. When Hawkeye had asked why the hell they would want that, Phil only shrugged and said, _Above my pay-grade. You'd be better off asking Fury._

He might be okay with this entire assignment if it didn't put a giant target on his back.

He'd dealt with the associates easily enough, as quickly as the mission would allow. The parameters were more specific than he was used to, and Phil blames it on the involvement of the World Security Council. Usually, they stay generally out of the nitty-gritty of the assassination business. Don't want their idealistic hands getting too dirty, Hawkeye always thinks. It's too far to say that he's scared, but he still keeps one eye open when he sleeps, just waiting for Solomon's men to come busting down his door. He holds his bow and quiver in his hand while he slumbers, and two handguns under his pillow.

He reaches the base of the tree, it's thick and tall with rough, gray bark. Clint's no botanist, but it doesn't look like any native South African tree species he's ever seen. Looks a lot more European, and he figures the mark must have imported them. Misses the motherland and all that. Species and genus don't matter much as he glances around for a handhold to hoist himself upon. "Let me shoot a metaphor your way, Phil."

"Shoot away."

When he finds no handholds, the trunk is perfectly smooth and far too wide for him to shimmy his way up, he growls a little. Couldn't just get this hit over with and get the fuck out of South Africa. His eyes look up the trunk to where the thick lower branches fan out widely, about twenty feet up the trunk. He scans quickly for a tree he could climb up the twenty feet or so and then just swing himself onto the primary tree where he would set up the nest. "Let's say someone gouged out my eyes-"

"Great start," Phil comments idly.

The new tree is thinner, younger than the intended one. It's still the same species, but this one is thin enough that he can fit his arms around and just inchworm his way up. "-and a different someone now says, 'Hey Hawkeye, we are standing at this giant mouth of a volcano with a very rickety wooden bridge strung across it-"

"Have you been pondering this one for a while?"

Once he has reached the heigh where the branches begin, his callous-roughened hands release the trunk with his legs crossed and tight to hold him aloft. Those hands curl around the nearest branch, and when he gets a good enough grip, releases his legs. He easily pulls himself up until his elbows are locked, and he can lift his legs onto the branch. He begins to climb. Hawkeye looks akin to a jungle ape the way he scales the branches, completely at home in the tree. Well, he has been climbing trees for ages.

It doesn't take the master archer long to get to a good enough height. His fingers close around a branch above him, and like a gymnast (_his days in the circus gave him a myriad of skills_), he creates momentum as he swings his legs back and forth. Just as smoothly, he releases the branch, and for the barest of seconds, he controls his almost-flight so that he lands easily on a thick branch that easily supports his weight with no difficulty. "Lord, man, just listen." Despite being on the tree of his choice, he is nowhere near where he wants to be, so he begins to climb higher. "So this person then says, 'there are soft spots all over the bridge, and one wrong step will plunge you into a bunch of molten rock. I looked at it from here, and you look pretty good, except for a couple holes along the middle. Just avoid those and you'll be fine.' And then, sure enough, I trust my peer and set out across said bridge, avoiding the spots he asked me to. And then... Boom! I fall through the bridge because he didn't see the rope was frayed in the middle. And now I'm dead."

"Seems like you've really thought this over."

"And yet you sound not very sympathetic to my plight."

"Are you in position?"

"Almost. Took me a while to find a good enough spot for a nest since, you know. I didn't run recon."

"Let me know when you're in position."

Normally, Hawkeye wouldn't even have Phil in his ear constantly. SHIELD had eventually learned their best sniper worked best with minimal interference. Just give him the basic parameters, and he would take care of the rest. But, since the intel was gathered by another agent and then the hit transferred to him, Phil is the middleman who will make sure Clint doesn't get killed.

Clint finally settles himself into position on a good enough branch (it wobbles a little when he comes down hard on it, but there's no danger of it breaking) near the midsection of the tree. He stands up, and withdraws a scope from his pocket. He'd admit they're useful sometimes, though he prefers to shoot his bow without them. Even his 20/8 vision has its limits. He doesn't attach the scope to his bow, still collapsed, and just looks through it into Anton Kuzma's bedroom.

He does not see what he had expected to see.

"Well, shit."

"What is it?"

The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, as if a sudden chill had come over him. "Kuzma is already dead," Clint growls, putting his scope back in his pocket and releasing his bow from it's collapsed form. His fingertips begin to tingle with adrenaline, and his gut stirs with something that is no longer unease. He lost that a long time ago. His eyes and ears are keyed to each and every small sound that stirs in the night. The Hawk is in his hunting zone. "Looks like a shot to the head." He leaves his bow low, but scans the visible estate for signs of another. "Damn it, who else was after him?" He'd had no idea that someone else was coming for Kuzma. Of course, a lot of powerful people want Anton Kuzma six feet under, but intel is supposed to inform him if he would come into direct contact with another... _separate interest_. A kind way of saying _another assassin_. And he is painfully aware that whoever had gotten to Kuzma before him might still be on the premises and be aware of his position. Clint hates being caught off guard, and it seems to happen a lot in his line of work. He nocks an arrow, his motions silent, but doesn't draw it back. Under his breath, he mutters, "This is the kind of shit that happens when I don't run my own recon."

"Everyone, Barton," Coulson responds. "It's only a matter of who knows where he is."

Hawkeye is running through the assassins he knows of that could have pulled off a hit like this one. Kuzma has, _had_, infamously tight security, and was incredibly paranoid to boot. This is a hit that not many could have pulled off.

The name Black Widow springs to his mind first.

"I thought we were the only ones who knew he was here."

"Evidently not."

"Thank you for the dry humor, Phil," Barton deadpans quietly. Never let it be said that Clint Barton doesn't know how to relive the tension.

"That's what I'm here for."

"So what's the plan now?" Hawkeye asks, before his eyes snap sharply to movement in the room. "Wait. Someone's coming in... It's the nurse coming to do the dialysis." He knows Kuzma has staff and wonders how the hell the nurse missed the bodies, because the Widow doesn't leave any survivors.

She is young, pretty and blonde, and he pulls out his scope again to read her lips. His Afrikaans is a bit rusty, but he can understand the gist. _Mr. Lewis? It's time for your- Oh my god. Mr. Lewis?_ She goes up to his body, and feels for a pulse. _Someone call an ambulance! _Her hands go to cover the wound, _Mr. Lewis, you're going to be okay! Someone!_

"The fucker's not dead," Clint says, almost laughs. This is definitely not the Black Widow. The woman never _didn't_ kill. The fact makes a bit of his tension release, and he becomes a bit less wary of his surroundings. "Should I take him? 'Course it'd be messy business with the nurse there and all."

"Negative. Do not take the shot," replies Phil after a lengthy silence.

"Why not?"

"Fury's concerned about the party who got to him before we did."

Fair point. Hawkeye is pretty concerned too. "I'll follow him to the hospital. Hopefully whoever tried to kill him will keep on following him until the job is done." He replaces the arrow in the quiver, but doesn't collapse his bow.

"No, regroup at the safehouse. We'll do some sniffing around to see if we can find who else knew about the estate."

Hawkeye doesn't bother with climbing down the slow way. A twenty foot drop is easy. With a sharp tuck and roll he is on his feet again, none the worse for wear. "When should I go back? You know I will even if I don't have orders."

"Thank you for reminding me how insubordinate you are."

"Aw, but Phil, you wouldn't love me if I wasn't."

"Good god, Barton, can we have some focus?"

"I can multitask."

"As I was saying, regroup at the safehouse. We're tracking him electronically. We'll let you know what hospital he's going to in a few hours with your new orders."

* * *

**Present**

It isn't easy getting the large canisters of hydrogen onto the roof, but she manages it. Posing as a repairman by wearing an unflattering coverall with the name _Dave_ printed over her heart, dirtying up her face, fake facial hair, and tucking her hair into an old baseball cap, she manages to cart all the parts she needs onto the roof over the course of a few days.

Before that, she obtains the hospital blue prints by posing as a concerned family member of 'Jethro Lewis'. She knows exactly how to play the sympathies of the nurses and doctors, with a sad story of how she is his sister and their parents died a long time ago, and it has just been him and her against the world ever since. _We were Jackie and Jethro. Inseparable. _She cries a few insincere tears, but the staff eat it up with sickeningly sweet sympathy, and eventually she's able to sneak into the hospital's records rooms without a hitch.

With the blueprints in her possession, he begins to plan exactly how she would show her country her dedication. She doesn't like overt displays, but that is exactly what she will need.

In light of her recent failure, they'd given her a communicator to use. It felt bulky and stuck out of her ear by a half an inch, but worse still is the voice of Rebrenovich in her ear, asking her for reports, asking her for plans and her locations and ETAs and things she doesn't want to say. She decides then that she will never disappoint them again, because if there is one thing she hates, it is having him in her ear.

Her first decision is to bomb the hospital.

Her next is to ignite the air with hydrogen gas.

An explosion, and a fire. There will be a lot of destruction and a lot of casualties. Exactly what her country needs. Exactly what she needs to do to show them her loyalty.

Rebrenovich approves. She doesn't know how to feel about that. Compelled to be pleased, like this is what she was made for, what she wants. It feels hollow, like it was someone else's. Stuck in her mind like it's lost.

It makes her head ache dully, so she ignores any sentiment over Rebrenovich to fade from her mind. It helps.

She does the math, works over the equations of saturation levels and takes into account air leaks, ventilation, and so on. The saturation of hydrogen gas in the air would have to be about 10 or 11 percent for a significant burn. Too little, and there would be no ignition; too much, and there wouldn't be enough oxygen to sustain the blaze.

Now, the Black Widow rigs large canisters of hydrogen gas to the ventilation system on the roof of the hospital in which a brain damaged Anton Kuzma lays in a deep coma.

The rooftop unit is boxlike in its design, with some pretty heavy duty air filtration mesh within. The mesh won't filter out the hydrogen gas she is putting in. The extenuating ductwork across the roof of the hospital will assure that the entire place will get saturated with hydrogen. She will have to act quickly once she reaches the optimal percentage.

In her workman coverall, she opens up the main unit via maintenance access panel. The unit has three intake tubes, although most of the hospital's air is recycled through the filtration system. She has six canisters, easier to disguise than three massive ones, and works on hooking up the canisters to each intake tube. They would be hidden inside the unit's walls, so if any other employees were to come onto the roof, the canisters would not be visible.

Rubber, airtight tubing soon connects two canisters to each intake valve.

Black Widow checks the pressure gauges on each canister, and watches as the levels on hydrogen within them begin to fall. Slowly, leaving enough time for her to rig the C4 in the vents above Kuzma's room, and in each wing of the hospital, and connect the remote detonation devices in the form of disposable cell phones.

She knows exactly what they want (_what she wants to want but can't_). An overt display of loyalty. Show them she is worth something. That she is valuable. She will give it to them.

Yes, this will be a fire with many casualties. Exactly what they want.

She takes extra care placing the packs of C4, sliding along the rectangular ventilation shaft that just barely accommodates her already slender shoulders. She couldn't get several fully wired, remote-detonated bombs into the vents, so she'd loaded all the components into a backpack that she pushed in front of her as she navigated the weave of the system.

She wore a simple watch on her wrist. She had three hours, twenty nine minutes, and twenty eight seconds before she achieved optimum saturation. She would have a window of three minutes to get out of the blast radius and detonate the bomb.

Each bomb is fairly simple to assemble and place, so she's ahead of schedule when she places the last one just over the pediatric wing. She finishes with that wing because she can drop from the vent into a supply closet that sees no visitors until the night shift.

She does so, and quickly locates the clothing she placed there. She sheds her workman's disguise, letting her hair free from the cap, tearing away the false facial hair, and slides back into Jackie Lewis's skin. She runs a hand over her face, ensuring all traces of her male face are gone. She checks her watch. Twenty one minutes until optimum saturation. Twenty four until detonation becomes impossible.

"Widow, report."

She doesn't let herself grind her teeth as she steps out into a deserted hallway and begins walking in the direction of the mark's room. "Out of ventilation." A small triad of nurses enter the corridor, and she changes herself to fit Jackie, makes her walk more flouncy, makes her face more concerned, "Yes, Mom, I'm going to see him now." She gives the nurses a polite smile and a finger wave as she passes them.

He doesn't respond, and she hopes it stays that way for a while.

In order to reach Kuzma's room to ensure that they haven't taken him anywhere, she walks through the main hall of the pediatric facility.

Everything is different in this part of the hospital. The walls are painted in bright, happy primary colors, and the air is filled with tension. Not the average hospital tension, but the tension that arises from knowledge of illness and death with attempted coverup by parents and doctors with stuffed animal giraffes as stethoscopes.

There are quite a few people buzzing around- parents, some who look hopeful, others who look terrified. Doctors and nurses who recognize her as Jackie and smile at her. She makes the effort to put on the strong smile, like she is actually afraid for her mark.

She is about to leave the wing when a little boy, no more than six, bumps into her. His face is positively cherubic. Not in the perfect features or round face, his face is actually quite gaunt and narrow, but that he is aglow with such childlike excitement and happiness, the Black Widow is caught off guard by its intensity and innocence (_She doesn't remember ever feeling like that_). He smiles up at her, and she returns it, explaining to herself that she needs to keep up the show for the nurses who know Jackie. "Sorry, miss."

"That's all right," she says, still smiling.

Regardless of the fact that he does not know her, he keeps smiling up and grabs her hand in his in a moment of sheer glee. Again, she is shocked, and this time she struggles to keep her mask in place. "Did you know I get to go home today?" he asks her, his cheeks all flushed in excitement.

Normally, she hates being touched by anyone, but for some reason, she doesn't feel disquieted by his small fingers around hers. Despite not knowing what he's talking about, she exclaims, "Really?" Why she is trying to appease the child, she still does not know. She should just leave. She has twenty one minutes until optimum saturation, and she needs to spend those minutes making sure Kuzma does not leave his room until she can trigger the bombs she placed.

But she stays.

She doesn't understand the warmth when he looks like she has absolutely made his day by saying that. "Yeah! I don't hurt at all anymore, and I haven't seen my room in four months!"

"That is a long time to not be home!" The Black Widow tells the child seriously, like he has committed such an act of unbelievable bravery by holding out as long as he has. He's been here four months, the gaunt face, the pain he mentioned... probably cancer.

"I know! Mom says I might be able to go back to school soon, too!" He survived cancer and wants to go back to school. There is a tightening in her throat and a pain in her head and eyes that she knows shouldn't be there.

Despite the strange sensations, she manages to say brightly, "That is pretty cool." Twenty minutes. "Say, where is your mom? I bet she's looking for you."

The boy looks sheepish now, shy as he asks, "Can you help me find her?"

There's no hesitation (_and there should be_) as she says, "Sure."

They don't look for very long when she hears, "Sipho! There you are!" The assassin turns towards the sound. Judging by the happy look on the boy's face, the woman is his mother. The mother looks up at the Black Widow, her son still clutching her hand. There's a look of guarded thanks in her face that every parent has on their face whenever they see their child with someone they do not know.

Sipho unintentionally clears the air. "Mama, this nice lady was helping me find you!" he says in the way that he seems to say everything, like there's a story in the sentence that is worth about three hours of time.

Now a grateful smile crosses her face. It's wide and genuine. "Thank you for bringing him back here. I'm sorry if he held you up."

"No trouble at all," she answers, trying to remember how long she has. It's got to be nineteen minutes by now. She's very aware of the fact that Sipho hasn't let go of her hand. And that he called her a nice lady.

"Sipho, why don't we finish up saying goodbye to all your hospital friends?" his mother suggests. "I'm sure the nice lady has places to be."

Sipho nods, taking her request very seriously. Once he lets go of her hand, though, he runs over to a nearby nurse and throws his arms around her waist. She looks very much used to his antics by now.

Looking away from the boy, her eyes land on the mother. Something in her expression prompts her to say something, even though she knows she cannot. The words come out of her mouth before she can even really try to stop them. "Congratulations. I heard you're going home today."

"Oh, he told you that?"

"Yes. He sounded very excited."

The mother sighs. "It's been quite the journey."

"I can imagine." Her mind is burning with curiosity when she asks, "When do you check out?" _In the next nineteen minutes. Please say in a few minutes._

She smiles, "In just a few hours." She sounds relieved, like a long ordeal is about to end.

The Black Widow's stomach drops. She hopes she doesn't sound off when she says, "Congratulations again. I'd best be moving along."

"Of course. Thank you, again, for bringing him back."

"You're welcome," she manages. He'd be better off if she took him somewhere... far, far away. Why does that even seem like an option? Because it isn't.

She turns, and she tries not to seem like she is rushing out of the pediatrics wing. Tries to slow her mind down as she heads on the route to Kuzma's room. Tries to put Sipho and his mother and their smiles and the C4 in the vents above them and the hydrogen they are breathing in and will kill them out of her mind.

"Widow, report. What the hell was that?"

And here she is thinking she lost him. "Got held up. On my way to the room now."

There was a significant silence before she hears his reply. "Be sure it doesn't happen again."

She heeds his instructions, but doesn't have to avoid any further hindrances. She eventually reaches Kuzma's room, and finds him, predictably, in the same place.

"Widow, report."

She resists the urge to scream and punch a wall, answers calmly, "He's here. Seventeen minutes until optimum saturation."

"Waste time. Be the dutiful sister. Chat with nurses. Then get out."

She doesn't snap over the line that that had been her plan in the first place. She only hopes he didn't feel brilliant coming up with it. "Yes, sir."

So she does. She chats with nurses, she holds Kuzma's still hand.

She has to create distance. She failed at it once already. Distance. Tries to not absorb the words she is hearing from the nurses that have gotten to know Jackie. Because she absorbed what Sipho told her. That he fought a disease for a long time and is only happy to be leaving and going to school and she's going to be responsible for his death. She only hears.

One of the nurses is pregnant. She and her husband have been trying for months.

The Widow can no longer focus on the still hand of the man she failed to kill. She stands, makes Jackie smile for Nurse Swaan. It's Jackie who embraces her, Jackie who is giving her warm congratulations to the nurse who thinks her name is Jackie. It's Jackie who compliments, "I'd say you are positively radiant."

It's Jackie who sees the nurse, young, pretty, looking away shyly and blushing. "Thank you." She looks full of life.

The Black Widow goes back to sitting by Kuzma, who looks as close to dead as a living person can be, checks her watch. Four minutes until optimum saturation. Seven until detonation is impossible.

She knows that it takes her three and a half minutes to exit the hospital. With a final round of goodbyes and she makes Jackie hug Nurse Swaan again.

Trying to convince herself she is completely calm and ready to detonate the bombs, she walks out of the hospital.

Her breathing wobbles as she tries to draw in a calming breath, only succeeding in a few shaky pants. Her palms are sweating, which is beyond strange because the Widow doesn't get nervous, and her fingers twitch against the detonator.

As she walks a safe distance from the hospital, out of the blast radius, it almost is as if she is walking through water. Constantly pulling her back from where she came. It would be so easy. Pull the fire alarm, get as many out as she can. Sipho who wants to go to school again. Nurse Swaan who has been trying for months.

But she didn't and she won't. Can't. The consideration of saving them, of saving anyone, makes her head throb with something that's not quite pain.

She finally reaches the safe distance. The blast radius isn't large. She didn't rig a lot of C4, enough to kill Kuzma, for sure, and then set the hospital ablaze Still, C4 packs a wallop. The concussion will be great. She will probably feel some of it, as she is a safe enough distance where her life would not be in immediate danger, and close enough to make sure her plan works.

To make sure she kills as many as she can.

(_Without battle, there is no victory_.)

(_It is an honor to be chosen._)

She swallows heavily.

(_We have no use of a child who cannot follow orders._)

The Widow presses the ignition.

The explosion sounds, ringing and rumbling through the streets of KwaDukuza. The glass shatters, the walls crumble, the roof collapses in flames. The explosion and fire will become legend around the area. _Where were you when the hospital blew up? Did you feel the rumble? Did the windows on your house shatter? Did you see the plumes of flame? Did it sound like the loudest thunderclap you'd ever heard?_ But it isn't the loudest sound she hears.

Seconds after, the screams begin.

**End of The Hospital Fire: Part 2 of 3**


	20. The Hospital Fire: Part 3 of 3

**AN1:** Holy crows. 20 chapters and 164 reviews. This is a milestone I owe to all of you who have alerted, favorited, and especially reviewed. I am so grateful to all of you! This story has certainly exploded into something I never quite anticipated. Hear, hear for happy accidents!

**AN2:** A little behind schedule, so I apologize to those on tumblr who saw the preview and expected it before last Sunday. Suddenly a set of different words were falling into place, and I had to add them.

**AN3:** This chapter is a continuation of the last two chapters. Natasha is 19 and the year is 2003.

playlist: _Lux Aeterna_ by Clint Mansell for Requiem for a Dream, _As It Fades_ by VNV Nation

**_The Hospital Fire: Part 3 of 3_**

She's dressed in plain clothes, tan slacks and a form-fitting button down, and her hair is longer than when he last saw it, and the curls have been straightened and are now cobalt black, but there is absolutely no mistaking who Agent Barton is seeing make her way from the KwaDukuza Hospital.

"Coulson, it's her. It's the Widow." Hawkeye had only just made it to the hospital after heeding Fury's orders to stay put until they could figure out the other players in the game. Barton wasn't a fan of the orders- figured he could do exactly what the stiffs behind the desks and computers were doing if he just kept a close eye on Kuzma. But he tries really hard to not disobey direct orders anymore, so he camped in the safehouse until he was needed.

And now he's cursing all of Fury's ancestors as he tracks the deadliest killer he has ever seen through the throngs of people on the sidewalks.

He doesn't know how she always manages to blend. A killer who is so obviously out of place managing to look seamlessly like she is normal. But when he looks closer, she is too seamless, too smooth and calculated to truly belong.

There's only a beat of silence before Coulson responds urgently, "Pursue, Barton. If you have a shot, take it."

"My pleasure," Barton growls, his feet a quiet series of scrapes across the rooftops of KwaDukuza.

"She is now the priority target." _Get her at all costs. _"Don't worry about publicity. We'll take care of it. Just make sure no bystanders can be injured... Clint," Phil begins and Barton knows he is pretty goddamned serious because he doesn't call him Agent Barton or Hawkeye. Ever the professional, Coulson almost never calls him by his first name. Twice he's done it, actually. Once when he officially graduated from SHIELD training. Then when he woke up from a three-day coma after an explosion in Syria. And now, "don't miss."

Barton allows himself a half-hearted "Ha."

She doesn't walk too far from the hospital. And then she pulls something into her hand, turning back to face the hospital. Waiting for something? No, watching.

It takes Barton all of 9 milliseconds to figure out what she is doing. He's been around the block enough times to take a guess at what her plan is. He's never felt so panicked since long before his SHIELD training.

There's urgency in his hands as he tries to line up a shot, her head and chest and hand holding the device perfectly and completely obscured by passersby. Does he take out the civilians to take out her? "Shit, Coulson I think she's got a detanat-"

Clint's been in explosions before, the worst being the one that resulted in his coma after Syria.

This one's right up there near Syria. He's just glad he had been as far away as he was. He sees the flash, the flames spitting outwards from the windows and cracks in the walls, like hell has risen up from the depths of the Earth. His brain barely has time to register the horrific image of fire and burning people before the blast concussion hits him.

He feels it ripple through him like the bomb in Syria, a tidal wave and a blast of pure sound and energy slamming into him like a wall.

The last sound he hears is shattering glass, and then it's the high-pitched hum that accompanies damaged eardrums greeting him.

He's lifted off the ground, pushed to the other edge of the rooftop by the wall, feels the cut of the cement surface on his arms and shoulders where they take the brunt of the impact when he slams back to the surface. He rolls a few times, and when the momentum finally dies, he allows himself only a few moments to bring himself back into his head.

He feels clear, so there's likely no head trauma, and he quickly climbs to his feet. He feels only minimally dizzy, but he has pushed past far worse. Despite the rather violent reaction to the bomb, his hand is still clutched around his bow. It's pretty durable, but the thing takes a beating on a regular basis, and he notices some of the carbon-alloy is slightly splintered on the bow stave. It will barely affect the bowstring's tension, but it's something he will have to watch carefully for breakage.

Despite his temporary loss of hearing, Barton can still feel the comm in his ear, and hopes it isn't broken. "Primary target blew the hospital. Agent status green. Hearing loss resulted from the blast. Unable to communicate via communicator." He hates using protocol on comms. So boring. And he probably can't even pass for green if his hearing's out. Maybe a soft yellow. Anyway, his hearing is not his utmost strength.

He immediately races to the previous side of the building he'd been on, and his sharp eyes search for the one who belongs but doesn't. He expects to find her calmly walking away from her carnage, self-satisfied and collected. The people on the street are in chaos; a lot of them still on the ground, many not even in the blast's radius but had dropped automatically at the massive explosion. A decent portion are running haphazardly, some calling for family members. Another part is running from the mayhem, and a smaller part running towards it, looking to help.

Those who were in the range of the fire... are on fire. Some are still alive, running, panicking and he's sure if he could hear he would be able to hear screaming. There are children... oh god. He looks away. He will deal with it later. Later. He needs to focus. This will be his best opportunity to kill her. Have her body disappear in the post-disaster cleanup. Her death will be passed of as a casualty of the blast. With the inundation of dead they are about to have, no one will look twice.

His first prediction is wrong. It takes much longer to find her since she is retreating so... strangely. He has never seen her anything but focused and point-oriented, always contentious of her environs. Now, she looks... normal. Like a shell-shocked citizen just trying to get away. Eyes wild. Face straight terrified.

He won't dissect her motives just yet. He can't do that now. This is the most important mark of his life and he won't let her just slip through his fingers like water. It happened in Brazil. He won't let it happen in South Africa.

He runs across the rooftops, bow at the ready, staying out of her line of sight, despite the fact that she doesn't appear to be looking for anyone.

He will wait until she is alone. Then he will take the shot.

This will all be over by tonight.

* * *

She stumbles, almost drunkenly, away from the smell of burning flesh and pained screaming. All that she caused. All that she had _wanted_ to cause, wanted to hurt and kill _for them_ so badly it hurt.

For the first time, Black Widow doesn't follow her retreat plan. Doesn't check her back to see if she is being followed. Doesn't cover her tracks or try to blend with the crowd. Her hand that holds the remote detonator feels like it burns her, the way it burned _all those people._

People scream. People run. She can feel their fear. It doesn't please her the way it should, feels more like muck and bile sliding over her skin. Suffocating and burdening, thick like mud and despair.

She shouldn't feel this way. This remorse. This is what she does. (_It is an honor to be chosen. Without battle, there is no victory._) She does this for the greater good, for justice and peace and the motherland. This is what she was _made_ for. (_One more message to our enemies. Justice and peace._)

If all that is true, why does she feel this darkness, this insanity, leaking from her like a toxin in her blood? Poisonous and cloying, it flows onto her skin, joins the heavy shroud of the fear, flows from her eyes and she finally collapses.

Her hands claw for purchase on the brick wall of an alley she has stumbled into. Her head aches, a migraine of epic proportions. Last time she was in medical, they told her to watch out for them.

Her thoughts, though, are anything but focused as she draws her knees up to herself. One of her shoulders is flanked by a trashcan which blocks her conveniently from the mouth of the alleyway and the other empty, stretching out for an undetermined distance. They alleyway is narrow, not often visited by people, she can see.

There is no one around to see when she finally breaks.

The Black Widow isn't as impervious as she likes to think.

The tears are coming out of her eyes, and she feels only slightly compelled to stop them. The only thing that she can manage is to keep her tears quiet, ever mindful of the communicator that keeps her in constant contact with her superiors. That they can hear every sound she might make.

And she wants to scream. _Everyone_ is screaming, screaming from what she had done to them. Her throat is tight with something she doesn't want to put a name to.

Her brain and eyes and ears are in agony with this inexplicable pain.

All she knows is that she has to be quiet.

She isn't aware of how much time passes. She only listens. She is still close enough to the hospital that she can hear emergency vehicles' sirens flying towards the blaze. Hears the screams and pleas for help. Can almost imagine the unbearable heat the fire would cause, searing flesh down to the bone.

She hears panicked voices, small voices, children, crying out _Mama! Mama!_

They sound _terrified_.

(_The dancing orange and red, someone holding her back from the flames. One long scream of terror and pain, then silence. Mama._)

A broken sob, only one, comes from her, and she puts a hand over her mouth to stop any more from coming. Her body tenses and she _shakes_ with the effort of trying to keep her tears silent. They cannot hear. Absolutely cannot. They need her as a soldier, she is their fist. This is who she is, what she was made for.

The Black Widow is coming apart at the seams. She bites down on her fingers, jaw trembling and ever aware of the wetness in her eyes and on her cheeks. Her entire body trembles with the effort to suppress any sound.

She just wants to scream, yell her fury and frustration and sadness to the clouds.

"Black Widow, report," the voice of the General fizzles through the comm that adorns her ear.

The sound of his voice literally makes her cringe, followed by explosions of pain in her temples. She wants to hate. Can't.

"The job is done," she says slowly, taking extra care to keep the tears out of her voice. She has done this since she was a child, so she succeeds.

"Proceed to extraction point. We will have a chopper there in an hour."

"I copy," she says. And then the act is gone again, and she's just... _pain pain pain_

She can't handle her own silence. Everything is coalescing in a fire that she just needs to let out, because it is_ burning _her.

She plucks the comm out of her ear, wants to crush it but knows she cannot. (She has always hated that word. Can't.) One hand is jammed in her mouth, her teeth still biting.

She holds it in her hand, just looking at it. Her shoulders shake. The audio receptors are not that strong, so she tears a strip of cloth off the sleeve of her shirt, and wraps the little black device in the cloth. Winding it around again and again. She trembling hands, she sets it a few feet to her right.

She swallows heavily.

Lets herself believe in the self-loathing that has become all she can think.

The smell of flames and cooked flesh.

The dancing red and orange.

Sipho. _The nice lady_.

The nurse.

All dead.

_I killed them all._

Her breath is coming in heavy, panting gulps, the salt solidifying from her tears on her face in dry tracks.

The screams haven't died down, not at all. They've become blurry to her as she breaks in the dirty alley.

But...

All of this. She can't feel this. She can't. Just cannot.

It is an honor to be chosen. Without her motherland she is nothing. She is not special, nor is she allowed to put the good of herself, of how she feels, above that of her leaders. Above her country and government.

She's been denying it all these years, but she _is_ a child. Theirs. A selfish child who values the lives of others above that of her government.

_What kind of person am I?_

_I am not._

_I am Black Widow._

The pounding, pulsing, burning in her head subsides.

Just follow her orders.

It's what she was made for, after all.

The Widow considers, after everything she has done, all she's killed, she should be numb to it by now. _Shouldn't I?_

* * *

Victory. He can taste it. Soon her atrocities will be over, and the scene that played out behind him will never happen again. His hearing slowly is coming back; he can tell because the high whine is disappearing, being replaced by the screams and cries of innocents. Then, he hears his comm chirp in his ear, Phil's voice beginning to thread through. "Barton, check in when you can hear me."

"Minimally," he murmurs.

She essentially stumbles into the alleyway, and once she is within the walls, he assumes her act will stop. He reaches an ideal vantage point, and can look at her straight on.

He reaches back for an arrow. Slowly, as if he is savoring it, taking his time.

The near silent slip of the arrow being nocked accompanies his fingers gripping the string; his whole body is humming with tension. He draws back further, his fingers and the string brushing just beside his lips. His eyes are zeroed in on her form.

Again, he is wrong. Her stumbling does not stop. Her hands are clawing at the walls like they are the only things holding her up. The Black Widow seems to just lose all ability to keep herself upright, and falls to the ground. She looks so young as she curls herself to the wall, hidden in the shadow of a trashcan.

With her knees now drawn up tight to herself, she could pass for a kid. Hell, she might be one. SHIELD still doesn't know exactly how old she is.

But it's not that image that keeps Hawkeye from loosing the arrow that would end her life.

No.

It's the tears.

The tears she keeps silent. Her entire form trembles with the weight of her burden.

"Phil, she's crying," he says quietly.

"I don't think I heard you correctly, Barton. Repeat."

"She's crying. Right in front of me."

"Has she made you?"

"Not that I can tell."

Sympathy, _overwhelming_ sympathy curls in him. He doesn't want it to, but there it is. Coulson made a point to tell him often that he was a nice guy. It's a trait that's gotten him into some scrapes over the years, so he tries to let himself withdraw from those opportunities. _If you hadn't gotten this life you would've been a really good guy. Your everyday Mother Theresa,_ Phil would tell him. Out of context, it sounds kind of cruel, like Coulson thinks Clint isn't a good man (_Clint sure doesn't on his bad days_), but Barton has never taken it that way. Such is his relationship with his handler.

She looks absolutely torn. Torn by indecision, torn by guilt, as he watches her bite down on her hand, teeth biting down_ hard_. Her trembling becomes full-on shaking. Hawkeye might be a distance operator, but to survive as an assassin, you better pick up pretty goddamn good skills at reading people. Most of his had come to him in his dark days before SHIELD.

This is no act.

"Barton, don't let her sway you. She's a manipulator."

Logic itself provides several flaws to the theory of manipulation. Why would she even be putting on the show? There is no one around that she's aware of, no mark to manipulate or pry information from. Clint doesn't want to be cocky, but he is excellent at staying hidden, so he is quite certain. As far as the Widow knows, she is alone.

It then dawns on him that he isn't watching the Black Widow.

He's watching a broken woman trying to collect the trashed and scattered pieces of whatever she thinks she is.

Just.

Like.

Him.

The parallel is too much. The bowstring slackens. Inch by inch.

In this moment, in an alleyway in KwaDukuza, Hawkeye sees that the Black Widow is indeed human for the first time.

She hasn't released her hand, and her jaw is stiff, eyes squeezed shut. To stay quiet, he realizes. She is fighting a war to stay silent; as he watches her flinch away from her right side, he can clearly see the bulky, out-of-date communicator jutting from her ear.

He can clearly read her lips. He has a decent grip on Russian. Not quite as good as most of the languages he's mastered, but it's certainly better than his Mandarin.

"The job is done." Then, "I copy."

She then takes it out, wraps it up in a strip of her clothing, and she stops staying silent. Her silence was nothing compared to the voice of her pain. The sound of her sadness reaches his ears, rough and breathless. Sounding like something desperately wanting to join the sane. Haunted.

All the sudden understanding hits him successively, and his conscious struggles to process everything.

He has tracked her for years, seen small discrepancies in her methods. Leaving children alive being a common theme. Barton saw her in Brazil. Was her conversation with the officer the truth? The possibilities spin out before him.

What evidence they have uncovered of the Red Room is nothing positive. What they have learned thus far is minimal but points to horrible acts of cruelty against children. SHIELD knows conclusively Black Widow was one of those children once.

Their best guess based on what they've managed to scrape together about the Red Room is that it was an experimental medical and psychological study on programmable behavior. Specializing in torture and medical experimentation, as well as brain-washing and personality replacement.

Dancing on the line of war crimes.

He wonders if she knows what they've done to her.

He wonders how this is even possible.

He wonders if he has made a mistake.

He wonders why he hasn't shot her yet.

_Because she's him. Lost._

"What would you say to me if I asked you to trust me for the next five minutes?"

Hawkeye hears Coulson sigh over the connection. His handler then says back, "I'd say I trust you to do something stupid."

Barton pauses, eyes still on her below him. "You did it for me," the agent replies quietly, seriously. The meaning and the emotional impact is not lost.

Phil's only response to that is to say, "I believe we are losing radio connection, Agent." Clint knows full well they're not. "This is a serious situation, Barton. Expect to go dark very soon." The SHIELD sniper smiles at the dry delivery. He can't ignore the affection he has for his handler, and his not-so-subtle messaging that he will let Barton go after her without the interference of SHIELD. "This is a potentially life threatening situation," Phil continues in that affable droll he manages so well, "Pursuit after the target is no longer the primary concern. Keep yourself safe until we can reestablish connection."

Barton is continually amazed at how effortlessly Coulson will stick out his neck for his sniper. It's a kind of loyalty he hadn't experienced before SHIELD, and doesn't think he ever will again.

He hears something that sounds like static, and then three rapid clicks that signal that his comm has gone dark.

His plan is only half-cooked when she rises to her feet, seeing that the blank, robotic Black Widow is back in place again.

He wants to stop her, stop her like Coulson did for him, tell her that there is another way to live. A better way. One that clears the red from his ledger. _You don't have to live like this._

It's a shit idea, and he knows it. Stupid, crazy, irrational, and did he mention stupid? Suicidal even. He fears that he has made far too many leaps in judgement about her, but in his gut he feels as if he_ knows_ he is right. Even if no one else will believe him, he feels as if he _has_ to help her.

Why should he deny her the chance he had?

* * *

The Black Widow stares hard at the opposite wall. Takes a cleansing breath in and out, ignoring the metallic, bitter taint of ash and blood in the air.

She doesn't hear it coming. Many years later, after years of partnership with the man who changed her life, and after many battles with her new teammates, she will tell the Avengers that she didn't hear the arrow that, when she looks back on it, probably changed her life. Small, seemingly insignificant events that would ultimately, drastically, and permanently alter her future.

She doesn't even register the feel of the shaft and fletching brushing across her right cheek until it is buried in the wall behind her.

She has never been so fucking startled in her life. She feels like an electric current runs over her skin for the barest of moments, the hairs on the back of her neck rising in one fell swoop. She dives away from the arrow, knowing that if he wants her dead she will be dead in the next few seconds.

He doesn't miss.

_Wait a second..._ That thought gives her pause. _He doesn't miss._

The trashcan that had initially obscured her from the mouth of the alley she drags in front of her. Weak shelter, but better than just putting a giant X on her forehead by remaining in the open.

"You missed," she calls out in English, a little more breathless than she would have liked. She curses because she's made noise and just taunted an opponent. She doesn't do that anymore.

She doesn't expect a response, but she gets one anyway. "Did I?"

That's about the time Widow notices that her comm is no longer in her right ear.

Her eyes flick to where the arrow is embedded in the brick and concrete. Her immediate reaction is to be impressed, because the head is literally buried in the red clay, by at least a few inches. She can see the shattered remains of her comm around it. _Damn. He has good aim._ That certainly shouldn't be her first thought. Her first thought should be finding out where he is so she can either kill him or stay out of his line of sight. Judging by the angle of the arrow, he's on the opposite wall in the alley.

She looks up to find him on the edge, but is surprised to see him making his way to the fire escape. Her impression is that he's quick. She'll give him that. Built more like a runner than a weightlifter, he is lean and nimble as he avoids the rickety ladders between each level, swinging around the poles like an acrobat. His shoulders and forearms are bloodied, and she bets he caught some of the concussion from the blast. She doesn't catch a glimpse of his face, and she doesn't plan to.

She won't stick around to see what he wants from her. She knows that if they don't kill you they want something from you.

She scrambles gracelessly to her feet, and runs for the streets. He may be quick, but she knows how to lose someone in a crowd, in winding streets. "Wait, I won't hurt you-" Widow hears him calling after her, but she refuses to listen.

This is exactly what she is made for, and she does it well.

Well, she would be if she hadn't been tripped up by something grabbing a hold of her pant leg. Her opposite leg compensates and she doesn't fall, and has enough balance to flick her gaze backwards to where she feels the resistance.

There's an arrow through the fabric that now pins it to the cement beneath her. _What on earth are these arrows made from?_

Her eyes catch his form dropping from the second story onto the ground, absorbing the landing in his legs and then walking towards her. Man, she misses her guns right now.

She contorts herself so that she can reach her trapped leg, and after pulling futilely at the shaft, resorts to ripping the trapped fabric.

She hates how she looks like a trapped animal right now.

The Widow manages to free herself, but by then, Hawkeye, the master archer himself, is almost standing over her. And he has an arrow nocked and pointed straight at her prone form. She freezes instantly. God, and she shouldn't. Her life is meaningless. She exists solely for the motherland. (_Do not yield until death. Death is preferable to giving away information. You must be strong in the face of death. For it is not something to fear, but a measure of protection._) But she stops. Just like in São Paulo. She stops and she hates herself for it.

Despite her error, she knows how to do this. Stall until she can turn the situation to her advantage. She remembers those lessons too.

He hasn't killed her yet, so she takes that as a sign he won't do so for a while. She climbs to her feet, eyes never leaving the arrow pointed in her direction, the hands that draw it back.

"I really wouldn't go any father than that," he says, "or I'll put an arrow through your skull."

She says the first thing that comes to mind. Something she's actually wondered for a while. "Strange choice of weapon. Not as efficient as a gun."

He just shrugs. He's obviously used to these kinds of questions. "For most people, yeah, probably."

He doesn't offer anything further, preferring to just stare her down. The Black Widow rolls her eyes. "What do you want from me?"

"I have standing orders to kill you, actually."

"You've done a good job of that so far."

He actually has the gall to laugh. "Well, you are interesting." He has moved so that he is standing between Widow and the mouth of the alley.

His words make no sense to her. "If you are here to kill me, just kill me."

"Why so eager for your own death?" Hawkeye asks in a light, curious tone.

"Why so eager to keep me alive?" she fires back. She could tell the truth to stall like she had done in Brazil, but that would require her to kill him. If what she has heard of him was true, that would be no small feat.

"Because I'm here to tell you that you don't have to do shit like this anymore."

She blinks in confusion. "Shit like this?"

"What you're doing. You just blew an entire hospital to kill a single mark. I saw you here. You regret it."

She forgets sometimes that he is likely just as skilled as she at reading people. Not that she'd been hiding it, but the sentiment remains. Her reaction is anger at herself. She allowed herself to have weakness. That cannot be tolerated. "I regret nothing in the service of my country."

"That's a load of bullshit, and you know it."

Her eyes widen. Those words are essentially the core of how she has lived her life. She narrows her eyes, tone accusing, as she says, "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

How long has it been since she received the transmission from the General? At least fifteen minutes by her estimates. She has only forty-five minutes to get to the extraction site, and she knows it will take her at least thirty-five to get to the predetermined point. She needs to end this soon.

"Oh, but I think I do understand. I think you want to please your country. The good of all above the good of one, right? That's a common theme among the Reds. But you don't understand why they make you do these things. You want to understand, you pretend you understand, you rationalize everything and think that the answer is there somewhere, you just can't find it." The head of the arrow is dangerously close to her personal space now.

She realizes belatedly that she has backed away from it until her back has hit the wall.

He keeps talking and she really wishes that he would stop. "Do you know what the Red Room was, Widow? Do you know what they did to you in there?"

(_No, no, please don't-. __Her diaphragm struggles, heaves and writhes, but the only thing she can manage is a pained, hissing breath.T__wo silver bullet-looking objects protruding from her temples. Blood seeps from her head.__ Channeling electricity through the body is the key. __Your talents cannot be wasted on normalcy, Widow. You have the privilege of being special. To waste such talent would be criminal._)

(_You will have to kill them, Widow. We have chosen you for this task. It is a great honor to be chosen. She falls, and it's no act this time. Painful, twisted, sickeningly truthful mercy. One jerk, feels the cord rip, feels the resistance, doesn't take no for an answer, applies more pressure. The final snap. Higher pitched than the rest. Pouring salt into the wounds, her eyes jerk open the moment before she leaves the world. A splash of blue against the white and the red._)

"My personal feelings are irrelevant. It is all in the service of the greater good."

He lowers the bow, and she finally, really _sees_ his face. He looks sharp, angular. Looks a lot like his namesake, actually. Tan, like he spends a lot of time outdoors rather than it being genetic. His gray eyes are pinning her as solidly as his arrows.

She knows in the back of her mind she should strike now. But she doesn't.

"That's what you keep telling yourself."

"Because it's the truth!" Widow snaps.

The Hawk doesn't flinch. He looks like he is contemplating something, almost shifting his head to the side, eyes barely narrowing. "I don't want to kill you but I don't think I can just let you go."

The switch in topic was abrupt, and it almost throws the Widow. "Then it's a good thing that you won't have to do either." And then she punches him in the face.

It doesn't have the effect most of her punches would. He's a trained fighter too, and recovers quickly, and instead of shooting at her like she had anticipated, he counters with his own right hook.

It lands squarely on her jaw, and the concussion of that blow is swiftly followed by one of the worst uppercuts she has felt in her life. Despite not being built like one, he sure punches like a weightlifter. She worries that he'd dislocated her jawbone, but its still in place she feels with a quick jiggle.

She'd been right when she thought he was quick. A fast kick to his midsection pushes him back far enough that she can mount her offense.

The Black Widow is almost ready to perform her signature move, until a sharp, "Hey! What are you doing?" disrupts the flow of their fighting.

An oversized police officer is jogging towards them from the opening of the alley.

She takes her advantage where she can get it. "Officer! Officer, he's trying to rape me!" The Widow screeches at him in Afrikaans.

The officer, upon realizing he has stumbled upon an actual crime, hustles faster towards the pair. "Stop right there!" he huffs.

Hawkeye looks at her incredulously. "Really? That is _dirty_. I expected a bit more from the Black Widow." He doesn't actually sound worried.

The officer has finally arrived and is a scant ten feet from where they had faced off.

She looks at the police officer, not having to try very hard to summon the weak victim, "Please stop him!"

When she turns back to where the Hawk had been standing, she sees nothing. Widow looks up to see him already halfway up the fire escape. _He's fucking quiet, too._

"Are you okay ma'am?" Officer... Anton asks.

She doesn't answer, doesn't need to. Just glides past and heads for the street.

The cop calls after her, and she doesn't stop. She has to get to the extraction point.

She rationalizes that she didn't have the time to kill him. He's a highly-skilled assassin, and any serious fight they would get into would lead to a long, drawn out battle that could quite possibly leave her dead. It would also mean she would never make it to the extraction point on time.

When she rationalizes it, it all makes sense.

At least that's what she tells herself.

* * *

In her official report, she says her comm was faulty and fell out of her ear and was lost in the chaos ensuing the explosion as she made her way to the extraction point.

She doesn't know why she lies.

* * *

In their official report, they say the communicator was likely damaged by the explosion, and worked only minimally before ceasing to function entirely. The loss of radio contact made it impossible to pursue the Black Widow without endangering the agent's life.

They both know exactly why they lie.

**End of The Hospital Fire: Part 3 of 3**

**To answer your questions, yes. Their meeting was meant to feel abrupt and kind of weird and brief.**

**Several of my readers have sent me messages wondering if/when I will do a Hawkeye origin story. It has crossed my mind a great number of times as I love Clint and I would love to be able to flesh out his character with a history. However, I just don't see this happening in the near future.**

**If you want a good Hawkeye origin story, go read _Youngest in History_ by Aggie2011. It is the only story I've read that satisfactorily fills out Clint's life, and it is nearly line for line with my headcanon for his character. It's on my favorites if you want to go take a read.**

**That story is another reason I probably won't be writing an origin for Clint. The story in that is almost identical to my headcanon and I hate telling the same story with different words. It's beautiful though, so I don't mind.  
**


	21. Drakov's Daughter: Part 1 of 3

**AN1:** It's just gross how long I made you wait for this one. Real life has needed the majority of my time lately, and for that I apologize. Please note that while I proofread this several times, I was a bit rushed to get it out to you, so please let me know if you spot any errors.

**AN2:** On another note, HOLY HELL IRON MAN 3. Also, jesus, an MCU TV show starring Coulson? Fuck, I am never going outdoors again. Now that that's out of my system, let's get on with it, shall we? Natasha is still 19 years old.

playlist: _The Approaching Night_ by Phillip Wesley, _Che_ by Break of Reality

_**Drakov's Daughter Part 1 of 3**_

They can both tell that Fury is beyond angry if the way that weird little vein in his forehead is pulsing or the way his eye is bulging so far out it seems like it's going to pop out is any indication. Also, his yelling makes it pretty obvious as well.

Barton tunes out of his spiel at around the third or fourth 'stupid ass decision' because obviously this is just Fury blowing off steam. Hey, SHIELD directors need to blow up in people's faces too. Doesn't mean aforementioned people need to listen word-for-word.

Besides, Phil is doing enough active listening for the both of them.

There had been nothing outright suggesting they had let the Widow go in their reports or in the mission logs. The only thing that might be suspect would be the comm recordings, but SHIELD usually doesn't make the recordings. Don't want any evidence of prolific assassinations or spying floating around. However, it does happen sometimes, but Barton suspects that it hadn't this time since Fury seems to be all bluster and lots of angry gestures. No solid proof.

"Last time I checked, Barton is a capable enough agent to not warrant constant comm contact," Barton hears Fury all but growl in Phil's face when he tunes back into the one-way conversation.

"To be fair, sir," Barton interjects, wanting to take the heat off his handler who had just been backing him up and Clint knows he owes Coulson, "before that mission we'd just had an intense staff meeting about the importance of following protocol and I guess that message just really resonated with us."

Fury's look says everything Hawkeye needs to know, but he backs it up with words anyway, "Your shit is not appreciated here, agent."

Coulson doesn't need to encourage his agent to shut up after that. Clint knows his particular brand of humor has never been appreciated by Fury, although he doesn't think _anyone's_ humor has ever been appreciated by Fury, but Barton couldn't deny the guilty keening because he knows that the baggage and complications from this situation rests squarely on his shoulders.

It's his own mind that berates him constantly about it. No need for Fury's angry words, because Barton is a capable practitioner of self-punishment.

After the thorough tongue-lashing Clint halfheartedly pays attention to, Fury sends the two away with an angry, final "Get out of my office. I've got a two o'clock", obviously annoyed he doesn't get the answers he desires.

Hawkeye certainly isn't sure how to feel about the situation either. It's been two weeks-not a word. In hindsight, it's not surprising, but it still stings that he hadn't been entirely right about her. Clint still holds out the candle for the Widow, but can't deny the heavy feeling of doubt in his gut.

Meanwhile, Coulson is feeling less than hopeful. "Fury's not wrong, you know."

Clint doesn't try to hide his bristling. "About?" Tension has been building between the assassin and his handler since the mission, and despite Phil's assurance that he has been behind Barton's decision, the archer isn't so sure any more. Hell, he's not one hundred percent himself, but still... the way she _was_... he can't shake the feeling that she will turn around.

Coulson gives Clint a look. "You know what about."

The air between them thickens. "You think I made a mistake?"

Obviously sensing where this interaction is headed, Phil tries to diffuse the intensity. "Look, I don't blame you, you were rattled by the explosion, maybe you thought you saw something-"

"Cut the understanding crap, Phil," Agent Barton interrupts, "I know what I saw."

Clint's friend and mentor stops in his tracks, the archer following suit. The hall they made their way down after Fury's dismissal is deserted, and despite the privacy, Coulson keeps his voice low. There is no mistaking the impatience and the stirrings of anger despite the volume. "You want me to cut the crap? Okay, then. Here it is: you messed up. Big time. She is the most wanted target and all of SHIELD is on high alert for her and any of her activities. We _had_ her. She blew up a damn hospital full of innocent civilians, and you were _on_ her. You had her in your crosshairs and then you just decided to let her go?"

"Hey, I didn't decide _anything_-"

Agent Coulson scoffs. "Oh right, the little police officer interruption. Barton, you and I both know that isn't why you left her."

"Since you obviously have a deeper understanding of myself than I do, why don't you tell me?" Barton demands.

"You're too close to this," he concludes. "You can't make rational decisions when it comes to her." And in that infuriatingly calm way of his, Coulson leans back on his heels and crosses his arms as if he's just delivered a damning final argument.

Barton's having none of it. "Rational my ass. Phil, I am probably the person who wanted her dead most in the goddamned world. You _know_ that. I have seen up close what she does to people, and not just read about it in reports," he accuses (_somewhat unfairly, because he knows Phil has seen what she's done as well._) "Why the hell would I just let a murderer walk if I didn't have a reason?"

"You know, Barton, I really don't know, that's why I'm asking."

_As bad as it sounds..._ "Call it my gut."

Clint will never forget the look of incredulous shock on his handler's face. "You let her go because of _your gut_?"

Barton figures it can't get any worse. _In for a penny, in for a pound._ "Or instinct or feeling or whatever! I don't think she's as bad as we think she is."

Coulson looks like he wants to leap all over what Barton just said, but instead just focuses on one point: "But you agree she is bad? Because we have killed for a lot less than what she's done."

"You're obviously trying to say something to me."

"Yes. I am trying to say that maybe that wasn't the call you should have made."

"Well then, it appears we disagree."

Clint cannot remember the last time, or _any_ time, really, his handler looked this pissed. "Cut the shit, Barton. She hasn't contacted you or tried to reach out or stop what she is doing in any way! You've deluded yourself into thinking she is just like you-"

"So I'm delusional now?" Barton asks sarcastically, not that it really stops Phil.

His handler obviously heard him but ignores the statement completely. "The only reason I went after you was because you showed signs of remorse-"

"No, Phil, now _you_ cut the shit," Hawkeye interrupts, not wanting to listen anymore. "The only reason you even knew I existed was because of my range scores in the Army. You were just hoping you could turn me back to your side when you offered me a little good will, offered me a job, offered to scrub my record."

"And you did. It barely took any time at all for you to contact me and come in." Coulson doesn't deny it and the fact that he can't deny it has hurt Clint for a long time, but now is not the time to be caught up in sentiment.

"I was a trickshot at the circus and joined the military then went hitman-for-hire. For all we know, she was brainwashed and manipulated and not killing me was an act of rebellion."

"You have to know how crazy that sounds."

"Of course I do, but we can't rule it out."

There's an uneasy silence for a few moments before Coulson speaks again. "I just sure as hell hope this doesn't get blown to hell." It's an olive branch, and Clint takes it, despite how angry he is.

"You and me both, Coulson. You and me both."

It doesn't fix anything, but it settles the fight for now. No matter what happens, one of them will be right, and one of them will be wrong. There will be no middle ground.

* * *

The pain subsides only briefly, fading to a bright burn rather than blinding agony, but then that comes back and she can't remember which way is up or what shape a square is or what color is red.

All she knows is pain.

Pain. _It is an honor to be chosen._

_Your talents cannot be wasted on normalcy._

_The good of all above the good of one._

She doesn't try to remember his words, but there they are, pulsing like a supernova about to climax: _you don't have to do this anymore._

And there's the agony again and she feels like she is losing.

* * *

An arrow looses from the bowstring, the fletching sliding through his fingers, ghosting past his cheek, and just barely skimming past the leather training guard on his forearm. It's a split second occurrence, and in the next it is embedded in the target.

It's not a challenge. He could hit a stationary target like the ones in the SHIELD range in his sleep. It's when he ricochets it off of walls and floors that it gets fun. He can't just use his regular arrowheads to ricochet- the ones he normally uses he made himself and will literally embed themselves in anything, no matter the angle. So he has his specialized ones, the ones that will cooperate. His pursuit of perfection in archery is an always time-consuming project- especially crafting arrows. If he needs a new head, he doesn't trust SHIELD science and tech division to make them properly, so he has to do it himself. These ricochet heads are his second generation (_he laughs at himself sometimes at how seriously he takes it_) and need testing. And he needs something to take his mind off of how shitty the situation is that he has found himself in.

Clint hates fighting with Phil. The man is the closest thing he has to family since Barney left him, and he is frustrated that Coulson can't see this the way he can. A juvenile notion, maybe, but Clint is also humble enough to acknowledge his handler's concerns.

Again, he has his doubts.

So, after he and Phil parted ways, things still not completely comfortable between them, he did what he always does to clear his head- shoot.

He likes these arrowheads. A little more weighted in the front than the first batch. Gets a sharper response, more control over the angle. Not perfect, but getting there.

Hawkeye fires another arrow, and another, and another, just listening to himself breath and the rush of his blood.

Midway through reaching for his next arrow, his specialized SHIELD pager beeps from where he had left it behind him. He lowers his bow, but doesn't set it down as he goes to check it. It's from Phil. **Inf brief in 10. 48I. **Calling him to the intelligence gathering room dedicated to the Black Widow. Yes, she has an entire room dedicated to finding her and killing her. There's an information briefing in ten. Attendance always mandatory when it comes to the Widow.

Well, he figures, he's gotta face his handler sooner or later. He'd prefer it not to be in the literal eye of the storm of what has caused their whole argument but life sucks that way, and he's a big boy. He can handle it. He stows the bow and quiver and heads to 48I.

The room is very well lit and has all of its computers along the walls occupied by roughly a dozen agents. The walls and floor are done in dark colors except for one wall which is encompassed by a glass, holographic imagery display, coined the 'holoboard'. A massive, LED-lit war table takes up the center of the room, filled with photographs, face trace results, reports, autopsy results, a few burnt and twisted remains of magnetic tape that once stored video footage of the Widow's acts, and countless other pieces of evidence gathered in the search for the Russian assassin. The rest is boxed and stored in evidence lockup.

At the sound of the door opening, Phil greets, "Hello, Agent," without turning, posture focused on the holoboard. So, professionalism it is. Barton can do professional.

"Agent Coulson." Clint is aware of how cold he sounds. He kind of regrets it, but kind of doesn't.

His handler stands next to the head information tech, Hawkeye only knows him as Fisher who has a penchant for wearing colorful socks with sandals with plaid shirts and a braided ponytail, with security clearance no one can shake a stick at, but for Clint and Coulson it's a bit laughable.

Barton approaches the war table, and leans against it, facing the holoboard with expectant eyes. "So why'd you call me up here?"

"We have new information," Fisher offers instead of Coulson, turning in his chair with a tablet in his hand. Barton sees he has chosen a pair of pink socks with dog paw prints on them, with khaki shorts and a Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory t-shirt beneath a red plaid button-up. Barton likes his 'I give no fucks about your skintight uniform code' attitude. "A lot of it."

"Well, that's one I have never heard before," Clint says, his words sharp and clipped. Once, he might have been excited about the new break, but now, with his suspicion of her loyalties, it might be the last thing he wants to hear.

Fisher doesn't comment on the tone. "Well, recently the government in Russia declassified a huge portion of their archives. Normally, classification wouldn't stop me," he says, tapping something out on the tablet, "but we are talking so classified there are only hard copies, and even those were locked up in some archival room so deep in the Kremlin they're probably surrounded by magma."

"Why couldn't we just break in? We've done it before," Barton points out.

"Because we couldn't," Coulson answers, "First off, we didn't even know if these files even existed, much less where they were located. Second, relations with Russia haven't been all that stellar. They've been improving recently, and the Council doesn't want any major fuck ups on our part to destroy the progress."

After a moment to process, Barton says, "Well, then, what was so classified they didn't dare digitize it? Also, why are they airing out their dirty laundry now?"

"One question at a time, Bill Nye," Fisher says, and after a few taps to the tablet in his hand, the holoboard flares to life, the glass turning a liquid-looking white-blue. "Question numero uno," he begins, sliding his fingers along the small screen in his hand, "The Red Room may not have been as government-sanctioned as we had thought."

"What do you mean?" Coulson asks, turning from the screen and to Fisher.

"It may have started off legit, but it sure didn't finish that way." A series of papers begin to appear on the holoboard in ordered patterns. "These are all sorts of executive orders and bureaucratic nonsense that I still have to sort all the way through, but the gist of the situation is this: The Red Room program started back in World War Two, not long after Captain America became the Lady Gaga of the thirties. Seems the Reds wanted their very own patriotic crusader, and were attempting to replicate the process used on Steve Rogers."

"So, it was basically an R&D department for supersoldiers," Coulson concludes. Which isn't that strange- every developed nation tried to recreate their own Captain America at some point in their histories.

Fisher nods enthusiastically, "Essentially, that is exactly what is was. But only at first. According to the reports to the up-and-ups, the research was becoming less and less about a perfect replica of Captain America and more and more focused on how to create the perfect spy."

"The perfect spy," Barton repeats quietly to himself. So many things are going through his head, about the Widow, about the Red Room. All of the possibilities are spinning out before him, further convincing him that it is becoming more and more probable that he is indeed correct about the Widow.

"Define the perfect spy," Coulson asks.

Fisher replies, "I should be asking you that. Whatever you can think of, they wanted it; cold, emotionless, strong to a kind of inhuman degree, supernatural stamina, high pain threshold, a follower of orders no matter what, inability to think independently from the state..." The tech looked back down to his tablet. "Seriously, you name it, they tried it. Even some fringe theories they tries out early on- invisibility, astral projection, immortality, reanimation. Seriously freaky shit."

"Did they succeed?" Barton asks. _Reanimation? You've got to be kidding._

"We don't know, but as far as we can tell there is no evidence they had any real successes with the fringe-y stuff," Fisher answers. The colorful man commands the tablet to project more images on the screen. Photographs. Operating tables, surgical instruments, what look like electroshock therapy machines, restraints, and a myriad of other devices that would perfectly fit into a nightmare involving an insane doctor. "What we do know is that they tried a whole host of really twisted stuff to achieve their ends. Electrical stimulation, brainwashing, advanced physical and psychological torture, drug injections, but-" the largest of the images appears on the screen, blocking all the others, "this was their Ninth Symphony right here."

It looks like a duo of plastic circles, the scale ruler next to them saying the larger one is about the size and breadth of a child's fingernail, the other a few millimeters smaller. They almost look like glass, but the photo shows clearly very thin silver and copper filaments running through them. Some sort of tracking device? Although Barton has never seen such a tracking device in his entire life. "What the hell is that?" he questions, squinting at the holoboard as if it will suddenly yield the answer to him the harder he stares.

"I'm not entirely sure," Fisher answers, "but based on what I've read, the dynamic duo there are supposed to control the behavior of the subject whose brain they are placed in."

Coulson shifts minutely, and asks deadpan, "So are we looking at a mind-control device?"

Fisher sighs and shrugs, heading back to his chair and plopping into it in frustration, "That was their hope, but I can't actually be entirely certain of what it does unless we actually have one in our hands to study. Which we don't." He clears the holoboard and looks back at Barton, "And to answer your question, Birdman, they didn't technically release it. Still classified well above top secret but they recently decided it wasn't important enough to not digitize the information and, well, you can't keep Fisher out of anything with a motherboard."

"You also said it didn't finish entirely government sanctioned," Coulson reminds the hacker, who nods in response.

"At first there was funding and support galore, but as they produced no results, friends and rubles began to get a little sparse. Then they found out what horrendous human rights violations were happening within those walls, and since the fall of the USSR, the government was new and scrambling and the Red Room just... ceased to exist."

"Well, that doesn't add up, because the Black Widow came onto the scene well after the Reds became Russians," Barton points out, puzzle pieces that had seemingly fit together in his head suddenly flying apart. There are too many inconsistencies. What are they missing?

"Well, there is no real paper trail of the Red Room's activities after the Union fell, but," Fisher says before pausing briefly, tapping out a series of codes on his tablet and bringing some images onto the screen. One depicts an older man, in full Soviet military regalia. He's broad beneath the uniform, not the kind that comes with lifting weights or excess fat, just a natural largeness that immediately screams _bully_. His features are broad too, wide nose and mouth, head topped in black that is peppered with such a large amount of gray it's hard to distinguish that his hair color was once black. His brown eyes are dead- not even cruel or sadistic or any of the usual suspects. Just dead. "That, friends, is the service picture of General Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov, wanted not only by Russia, but by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Torturing prisoners and killing literal boatloads of people. I can go on for quite a while, but in short, he is a bad dude who is probably some sort of masochist or psychopath or serial killer or all of the above."

Barton runs a hand through his hair before sighing, "Why do we care about Ivan?"

"Well, I don't have enough to take to Wells Fargo but I think I have enough to fill the piggy bank," Fisher responds. "Bezukhov was a big supporter of Communism. Like, a_ hey, let's take over the world and convert all countries to communism because democracy and capitalism suck_ kind of supporter. He had a lot of friends with a lot of connections with the same ideas. After the USSR fell, Russia had no interest in protecting him from the ICC anymore, and he dropped off the map. But, most of his friends didn't. And it was a group of those pro-Commies that bought up the facility that housed the government's Red Room program."

"So your theory is that Bezukhov is still running the show?" Coulson says, more of a statement than a question.

"That is my theory, but I'd bet my vintage baseball card collection except Kirby Puckett that he's doing it under a different name. But wait, I am not done, my good sir," Fisher says, who probably should be Agent Fisher by now and given a fucking medal for discovering in a few months what SHIELD hasn't been able to for years. "These friends gladly leased the building out to the Russian army, who used the top four floors for certain training phases of new recruits. But every floor beneath that is supposedly 'empty.'" The technician puts air quotes around the last word.

Barton nods, following Fisher's logic. "So that's where all their training went on."

The tech confirms, "So goes my thinking, but we can't know for sure until I get more info."

"Do we have anything in regards to the Widow's identity?" Coulson asks.

The holoboard is cleared once more and replaced with an image of an old Soviet birth certificate. "We believe she was born Natalya Alianovna Romanova on January 3, 1984. Her parents were Sergei Romanov and Anya Kozakova-Romanova. They were killed in a pretty mysterious house fire in December of 1986, the cause or why they could not get out while their daughter did was never officially determined or reported." A shot of an old newspaper shows the charred remains of a home, and another photo captures an official-looking man in a suit holding the hand of a little girl. A scared looking child with red hair. "Instead of looking for a next of kin, she was taken custody of by the government, into Soviet foster care, as it were, and that was that. No other records for her exist.

"As far as we've been able to tell, the participants in the program were all female, and all given codenames."

There's something in what Fisher says that hits Barton the wrong way. "Wait, operatives, as in plural, as in there is more than one Black Widow?"

"We don't believe so. According to what we have, only one came out of the program."

"What happened to the others?" Clint asks.

"We don't know. So far most of this is just a mystery wrapped inside of an enigma wrapped inside of a taco eaten by Agatha Christie."

Coulson is the one who asks, "Do you have any leads on where she is currently?"

Fisher shakes his head, somewhat dejected. "She's in the wind."

* * *

**La Rochelle, France**

**Beauchene Estate**

**Just past sunset**

The elegant red dress falls over her pale skin like silk, in a daring cut that dips low on her back, (_she tries to ignore the fact that she had to spend three and a half hours carefully covering the scars of her back with concealing makeup and paint_) curving in to cling to her sides and finishes in loose waves that shimmer in the light as she walks. Her lips are painted violently scarlet to match, eyes done with smokey eye makeup that brings out the teal in her eyes that have grown bluer over time. Her pale skin makes her look ethereal, angelic. Her hair is its natural tone, although it carries with it subtle hints of burgundy from her last mission that did not get fully stripped with her last dye job. The brown that merely deepens the red into mahogany does nothing to detract from the overall image of a woman who looks beautiful in red.

Partygoers turn and look at her, some do double takes, many men smile and simper at her, insinuation heavy in their gazes. Some women look upon her with hopeless envy, some with jealous scorn.

The Black Widow knows how to make an entrance.

But tonight, she is not the Black Widow. Tonight, she is Natalia Shostakova, philanthropist and mysterious elbow-rubber with the high society folk. It is a comfort to her to know she can still carry a guise without much effort, can still hold attention and enthrall a room with a false persona. What happened in South Africa did not shake her because she is the Black Widow and she cannot be shaken, but his words still come to her. Almost constantly.

She tells herself it's because he got away, because she didn't kill him.

That's the reason. There's no other possibility.

The Widow falls back into Natalia, with her smiles and debonair flourish and beauty.

The building has soaring ceilings, with gilded arches and marble buttresses flying upwards with it. A second floor balcony wraps around the main party room, and several groups engaging in private, quiet discussions have moved up there. Shades of blue, cream, white, and silver are captured in expensive fabrics and velvets draped over tables and as decorative tapestries. A quintet of cellos hum a constant, quiet melody to underscore the buzz of muted conversation.

Considering her darkly enticing attire, she hadn't gone unnoticed in the room, exactly as planned.

The host of the gathering, Constance Beauchene, an insignificant character in the grand plan but still necessary to achieve her ends, along with her husband Andre, make their way over to now-Natalia. Putting on her best polite smile, she meets them halfway. "Ms. Shostakova, I presume."

Natalia simpers, looking honored and flattered Constance knows her name. "You presume correctly. It's lovely to meet you in person, Mrs. Beauchene."

"Please, Constance."

"Natalia, then."

"Very well, Natalia, I am pleased-"

_You are doing very well, Natalya. Your leaders are very pleased._

She snaps out of the throes of the memory quickly enough to catch the gist of what Mrs. Beauchene had been saying, "-has truly revitalized our efforts in Guatemala. Without your generosity, it would have been impossible."

The lingering scent of metal and blood fill her mind and it seems as if the warm air of the party has suddenly taken on the taint of the memory, but she knows that is not true. Her heart rate has picked up significantly. Her adrenaline is running even though she is not in a fight and has never felt nerves from lying. "I'm so glad to hear that," she responds, no trace of discomfort heard in her voice, "Your organization has done a tremendous amount of good and I am happy to be able to make it possible." Since her run in and subsequent escape (_but it wasn't really an escape and deep down, she knows it_) from Hawkeye, flashes of things she doesn't remember happening force their way into the forefront of her mind.

What makes her remember them is the familiarity. She can remember the physical sensations, and it feels like déjà vu in reverse.

Their conversation goes on in that politely comfortable way, but the Black Widow _(that's who she is. Black Widow. Black Widow. Black Widow. The Black Widow spider is renowned for the female spider's cannibalistic mating tendencies._) is ever point oriented, and eventually works up to it naturally in conversation, as not to draw suspicion, "I would love to talk to Dr. Drakov about the work he has been doing. Is he here this evening?" Because she is here for the mark.

_There is so much red._

_You don't have to live like this._

_State your name._

_Black Widow._

The gracious host would never refuse a guest, and she points Natalia to the bar where a lone man is standing.

"Thank you. I hope we will talk again," she says with a parting smile.

Roughly 1.85 meters tall, on the lean and wiry side of his weight class. Easily recognizable physical markers- long, square face, prudent chin. Dark blonde hair, and green eyes.

She is glad for his physical attractiveness. Maybe this will finally be the mark she won't have to lie to about her lack of lubrication (_but she knows he won't be. She's fucked men just as handsome and encountered the same problem every single time._)

She straightens her shoulders, pushes her chest out, slides into the familiar if uncomfortable skin of seduction. "Dr. Drakov?" she asks, makes her voice a bit timid as she comes up on his right side.

He'd been resting on his forearms with what looks like a double shot of whiskey when he turns to face her completely. "Yes?"

She smiles wider, "I'm so pleased to finally meet you." At his questioning glance, she thrusts a hand out quickly, as if she'd forgotten, "Natalia Shostakova."

He smiles a bit too, when he recognizes her name. "Ah, and I am happy to make your acquaintance as well." He takes her hand, she notes that his are much softer compared to hers. Hands untouched by violence. Very fitting for doctor's hands.

"I just wanted to tell you how impressed I am by your years of service to Doctors Without Borders. I work closely with the organization and I've been to some of the places you have helped and the patients haven't stopped raving about you. I was just curious as to where you were headed next."

"I appreciate you saying so but, well, I haven't worked with the organization in some time."

"Why not?" The Widow knows perfectly well why.

He clears his throat a bit uncomfortably, eyes wandering for a moment before coming back to her. "My wife passed almost two years ago. I had to return home to care for our daughter."

She is a good enough actress to look horrified with herself. "Of course, I'm so sorry. I'd heard she'd passed and I am sorry I never got to extend my condolences. She sounded like a wonderful woman."

He smiles in a forlorn way that she can identify but not understand. "That she was."

"How old is your daughter?" she asks, switching tracks as she could sense she'd been losing his interest quite quickly.

"She's two."

"Well, I'm sure that's an exciting time for you at home," she replied with a simpering smile. It might be hard to move from talk of his daughter to seducing him, but she had worked her way out of harder conversations before and still managed to get the men and women to come to bed with her.

He smiles back, but it's obvious his heart isn't in it, "That's a way of putting it."

She doesn't lose her expression of kindness melting into something else, inwardly she frowns. He is acting very disinterested in her, which is rare, especially when she really puts an effort behind it.

Time to change up her game a bit. She flags down the bartender. "Can we get two more of what he's having?"

He sees what she's doing and tries to refuse, "Oh, you don't have to-"

She changes from kind and polite to playful and interested. "No, please, I want to." Also, the alcohol would loosen him up a bit, hopefully more pliable and willing to go along with her machinations. "Besides, it's an open bar. Might as well take advantage."

"I really shouldn't. I have a kid to get home to."

She let her playful look slide into seriousness. "If there is anything I have learned in my life it's that you have a responsibility to yourself as well. You shouldn't just run yourself ragged looking out for everyone else's interests and not your own." She finishes with a soft, understanding smile.

He looks initially like he will refuse, but she knows he won't. His behavior pattern is predictable. He has a propensity for alcoholism. He went through a very heavy drinking period in the months after his wife's death. Although he got it under control in the past year and a half, he is still prone to the lure of alcohol. She also knows that he does occasionally pick up random women and take them to anonymous, by-the-hour hotels, and never to his home. He likes girls with red hair.

"I... I suppose you're right."

And with that, she knows that the deal is sealed. Her smile widens, "I usually am," she answers, letting Natalia loosen up a bit more as she picks up her drink delivered by the barkeeper. She raises the tumbler, gesturing for a toast. "To new friends," she says, holding his gaze to make him understand exactly what she means.

"To new beginnings," he says back, not shying from the direct eye contact like he had before.

The glass clinks, Natalia and Drakov flirt and drink, and the Widow watches.

She would like to just have sex with him, and get the answers, and then kill him. It's her standard fare, but that isn't the mission this time.

The time passes quickly, both of them refilling their drinks multiple times, and the Widow watches for signs of drunkenness, but he holds his alcohol well, though it certainly loosens his tongue to a useful degree. Obviously not to the degree that she would eventually need, but enough to begin to slowly gain his trust.

She counts each drink. After his second glass with her he begins to share his experiences with his work, stories from med school, usual first meeting thoroughfare. After his third, he shares stories of his daughter, he begins to laugh.

Natalia makes him laugh.

She meets him halfway, sharing falsified stories of her own work with humanitarian organizations, of getting her law degree. The conversation flows very well between the two, and the Widow knows that Drakov likes Natalia very much. Much more than the average woman he just takes to a motel and fucks. The kind of woman he could be open to loving, trusting, sharing his life with. Because that's the kind of woman Natalia was crafted to be.

There is no overlap there. It's just Natalia growing fond of the young doctor. Just Natalia liking the way he smiles and laughs. Just Natalia admiring his love for his daughter. The Widow is only watching.

(_She doesn't want to admit she hates what she is going to do._)

"So I finally pry the door open and, I kid you not, there was this twelve foot long python taking up the entire storage cabinet!" Natalia shares animatedly.

Drakov laughs openly now, then says incredulously, "No way, a python? How did it even fit into a cabinet?"

"Snakes can get anywhere if they really, really want to, Gavril." She tests out the use of his first name to see how he reacts.

He looks pleased by it, which is an excellent sign. "Well, Natalia, you've sure had some adventures."

"I have a lot more," she says, "Only if you'd like to hear them, I suppose." By this time, a great number of the party guests had cleared out, many of the wait staff have begun to clean the room. The classy way of saying _Party's over. Get out. _"Well, when we're not at the end of the night, anyway." She pauses, waiting for her words to have the proper effect. "I'd really like to see you again," she offers with a smile.

He responds in kind, "I'd like that, too."

Natalia slips a card with a phone number on it from her clutch.

"I'll be seeing you soon, Gavril," she says, standing from the barstool where she had been perched for the past several hours.

He makes no moves to get up yet, but his answering smile is bright with anticipation and want. "And I you, Natalia."

* * *

**End of Drakov's Daughter: Part** **1**

Just for reference, Dr. Gavril Drakov, in my head, is being played by the awesome Eric Winter. I've got some promo art up for this series of chapters on tumblr. There's a link on my profile.

Fisher is indeed a minor comic-canon character who I am using for my own purposes, and developing independently from what may have been in the comics.


End file.
